Patient experiences at dental school clinics: A comparative analysis of online reviews

Online review sites have become popular platforms for health care consumers to rate their experiences. An analysis of online reviews can help dental school clinics learn from patient feedback that is not accessible through formal patient surveys. This study's objectives were to characterize patient-generated reviews posted on the Yelp and Google review sites and assess any associations between dental schools' ratings and their respective characteristics.

This cross-sectional study analyzed patient-generated Yelp and Google reviews regarding their experiences at 65 dental school clinics between June and August 2019. Quantitative analysis of selected dental school characteristics and patient ratings was performed using analysis of variance, with effect size measured by the omega-squared (ω² ) statistic. Statistical significance was set at p = 0.05. Qualitative analysis of review content was conducted using NVivo software.

Among 65 dental schools in the Unite States, 63 schools (96.9%) had reviews available on Google, and 55 schools (84.6%) had reviews available on Yelp. A total of 4702 patient reviews were included in the analysis (2516 [53.5%] from Google [mean rating = 3.6 ± 0.6 stars] and 2186 [46.5%] from Yelp [mean rating = 3.1 ± 0.9 stars). A school location in the South/Midwest was significantly associated with a higher Yelp rating compared with a school location in the Northeast/West (ω²  = 0.140, 95% confidence interval = 0.002-0.310, p = 0.003). Qualitative analysis found that review content was predominantly negative; while subthemes in care delivery generated positive responses to care quality, those regarding the pre-care and post-care categories garnered negative responses. This finding was particularly true for comments addressing staff helpfulness, billing and payment, and clinic functioning.

This study's findings indicated that dental programs' online reviews were predominantly negative and covered categories that were not addressed in existing satisfaction surveys.