Online Reviews of Health Care Facilities

What words, linguistic categories, and themes correlate with highly positive or negative ratings in online reviews of health care?In this cross-sectional study of 1 099 901 online reviews posted from 2017 through 2023, 46.3% of US health care facilities were rated 1 to 2 stars and 50.1% were rated 4 to 5 stars. The word “not” and topics related to administrative barriers were significantly associated with negative ratings, whereas the conjunction “and” and words related to support staff interactions were associated with positive ratings.Findings of this study suggest that assessing online-review language in real time could help clinicians and administrators identify possible emerging communication or access problems and target patient-centered quality-improvement interventions.

Corresponding Author: Neil K.R. Sehgal, ME, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, 3330 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (neilsehgal99@gmail.com).

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