Measuring patient satisfaction with medical services using social media generated data

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Consumer Behavior Analysis
• Digital Health Data Analytics

Background:

• Traditional patient satisfaction surveys face limitations in data collection methods.
• Social media platforms offer a growing source of proactively generated consumer feedback.
• Evaluating alternative data sources is crucial for accurate patient satisfaction measurement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility of using social media data to measure patient satisfaction with medical care.
• To compare patient satisfaction scores derived from social media with traditional survey methods.
• To explore social media data as a potential validation or replacement for patient satisfaction surveys.

Main Methods:

• Extracted health and medical service ratings and reviews from the social media site "Yelp!".
• Standardized consumer-identified services to traditional health service research typologies.
• Recoded "five-star" ratings into a five-point ordinal scale for satisfaction scores.

Main Results:

• Overall patient satisfaction score from Yelp! data was 3.8 (SD=1.7).
• Average satisfaction scores varied by service type, with dentists and physical therapists receiving higher ratings.
• Specialty physician offices had the lowest average satisfaction score (3.16).

Conclusions:

• Social media data, like Yelp! reviews, can serve as a valuable alternative or supplement to traditional patient satisfaction surveys.
• This approach offers a "fortuitous" data source, especially given potential reliability issues with modern survey methods.
• While current estimates lack geographic representativeness, methods can be adapted for targeted population analysis.