Crowd-Source Reviews vs. Patient Satisfaction, Quality and Outcomes Reports
The use of social media by consumers to both look up as well as leave performance reviews on the purchases we make and the services we use is growing exponentially. That use was expanded last week with the U.S.Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to permit companies to disclose material information to investors, as long as they have previously alerted investors that they will be doing so.
Businesses have long-since understood the marketing value of Facebook, Twitter, Yelp! and other social media platforms, but this nod from the staunchly conservative SEC surprised many Wall Street observers.
The value of social media has not been lost on hospital operators, physician organizations, health plan administrators or others in the health care industry, but a recent finding on the power of crowd-source reviews of hospitals may alter its influence on the market.
To that point, in the November 2012 issue of the British Medical Journal Quality and Safety, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco reported study findings showing a strong correlation between hospitals that receive high ratings (four or five stars) on Yelp! and those with high HCAHPS* scores, lower hospital readmissions and lower mortality rates. Coincidence? Maybe not. According to the California Health Care Foundation, “This suggests that the crowd-sourced reviews may tell stories that relate both to the experience of being a patient at the hospital and how well patients do during the hospitalization and after discharge.”
Will crowd-source reviews on consumer encounters someday trump hospital quality/outcomes and HCAHPS survey reporting? A mentor of mine once lamented that we live in a world where communicating with the consumer en masse has to be a People Magazine experience to be effective. Social media is the new People Magazine… the difference being that this version is written by the people and available to everyone at no cost.
Your thoughts?
*Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey: a hospital patient satisfaction survey disclosed by the federal government on the Internet at HospitalCompare.hhs.gov.NOTE: Healthcare WebSummit will present the webinar, “Retail Clinics: Healthcare Factor or Fad?” April 25. Learn more.