Observational studyBMC health services research2018
A cross-sectional study assessing the association between online ratings and clinical quality of care measures for US hospitals: results from an observational study.
Observational study in BMC health services research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Key performance indicators of hospital supply chain: a systematic review.BMC health services research · 2024Pooled it
- What Do Patients Complain About Online: A Systematic Review and Taxonomy Framework Based on Patient Centeredness.Journal of medical Internet research · 2019Pooled it
- What Do Patients Say About Doctors Online? A Systematic Review of Studies on Patient Online Reviews.Journal of medical Internet research · 2019Pooled it
- Understanding online hospital patient reviews: a nationwide cross-sectional analysis of polarity, actionability and themes.BMJ open quality · 2026Article
- A cross-sectional analysis of Yelp and Google reviews of hospitals in the United States.Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open · 2023Article
- Assessment of hospitals' websites in Portugal.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Patient Experience Surveys Reveal Gender-Biased Descriptions of Their Care Providers.Journal of medical systems · 2021Article
- The Quality of Infectious Disease Hospital Websites in Poland in Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- [Advertising or information in ophthalmology? : Scientific evaluation of a YouTube sample].Der Ophthalmologe : Zeitschrift der Deutschen Ophthalmologischen Gesellschaft · 2021Review
- U.S. hospital performance methodologies: a scoping review to identify opportunities for crossing the quality chasm.BMC health services research · 2020Article
- Measuring Regional Quality of Health Care Using Unsolicited Online Data: Text Analysis Study.JMIR medical informatics · 2019Article
- Harvesting the wisdom of the crowd: using online ratings to explore care experiences in regions.BMC health services research · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundLittle is known about the usefulness of online ratings when searching for a hospital. We therefore assess the association between quantitative and qualitative online ratings for US hospitals and clinical quality of care measures.
methodsFirst, we collected a stratified random sample of 1000 quantitative and qualitative online ratings for hospitals from the website RateMDs. We used an integrated iterative approach to develop a categorization scheme to capture both the topics and sentiment in the narrative comments. Next, we matched the online ratings with hospital-level quality measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Regarding nominally scaled measures, we checked for differences in the distribution among the online rating categories. For metrically scaled measures, we applied the Spearman rank coefficient of correlation.
resultsThirteen of the twenty-nine quality of care measures were significantly associated with the quantitative online ratings (Spearman p = ±0.143, p < 0.05 for all). Thereof, eight associations indicated better clinical outcomes for better online ratings. Seven of the twenty-nine clinical measures were significantly associated with the sentiment of patient narratives (p = ±0.114, p < 0.05 for all), whereof four associations indicated worse clinical outcomes in more favorable narrative comments.
conclusionsThere seems to be some association between quantitative online ratings and clinical performance measures. However, the relatively weak strength and inconsistency of the direction of the association as well as the lack of association with several other clinical measures may not enable the drawing of strong conclusions. Narrative comments also seem to have limited potential to reflect the clinical quality of care in its current form. Thus, online ratings are of limited usefulness in guiding patients towards high-performing hospitals from a clinical point of view. Nevertheless, patients might prefer different aspects of care when choosing a hospital.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.