[User Satisfaction in Social Media: How do Patients Rate their Hospital Stay Online?].

BACKGROUND

Patients are increasingly using social media and review sites to get information on hospitals, to rate them or to write a review about their own experiences during hospital stay. Hospitals have the opportunity to use these patient reviews for internal quality assurance as well as online reputation marketing.

OBJECTIVE

The objective is to analyze the satisfaction ratings of previous hospitals stays by social media users on platforms such as "Google", as well as reviews from the German site "Klinikbewertungen.de", and to compare them.

METHODS

User reviews (n=16,691) for all hospitals (n=180) in the federal state of Lower Saxony (complete survey) for 2013-2018 were extracted from the platforms Google and the German Klinikbewertungen.de. Subsequently, a descriptive and inductive analysis (Chi²-test) of the user reviews and a comparison specific for the platforms were completed.

RESULTS

Most users are satisfied with their hospital stay, whereby users of the platform Google ratd their hospital stay worse (n=6,181; 57.6% satisfied) than users of the platform Klinikbewertungen.de (n=10,509; 65.4% satisfied). Features of the hospital (number of beds, specialist departments) and features of the users (author, type of insurance) were significantly associated with the rating for the hospital stay (star review). (Google: number of beds p<0.001; Klinikbewertungen.de: number of beds p<0.001, author p<0.001, specialist departments p<0.001, type of insurance p<0.001).

CONCLUSION

The online review of a hospital stay is associated with the number of beds, the specialist departments of hospitals, whether the author is the patient or a relative, and the type of health insurance they have, namely private or statutory. Online reviews and ratings for hospitals may be used for internal quality assurance or improvements of company online reputation.