“Yelpifying” Health Care?

I cannot say that I think particularly highly of the impending “Yelpification” of health care, as remarked on at the Health Affairs Blog:

Yelp is beginning to play a role in helping patients with their health care decisions. But whether Yelp ratings will drive patients in the right direction—toward high-quality providers—is still unclear.

In an April 2017 New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth)-funded study, the Manhattan Institute explored the extent to which Yelp ratings of hospitals in New York State correspond to objective outcomes measures across all of a hospital’s patients. The study found that higher Yelp ratings are correlated with better-quality hospitals and can offer consumers a useful, clear, and reliable tool that can be easily accessed. In short, for one very important measure—potentially preventable readmissions—Yelp ratings appear to have a moderately strong correlation with that measure. That is, higher Yelp scores for hospitals are associated with lower readmission rates. These results build on prior evidence that found a similar relationship between Yelp scores and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) patient experience measures for the hospitals in the study.

But while this research has helped to move the needle on validating Yelp as an important asset in the tool chest of health care quality tools, there are still important questions left unanswered.

In fact, I think that the effect of the Internet, especially patients diagnosing their own conditions using Google, has probably to increase the cost of health care, at least at the margins.

The diagnosis or treatment that you want is not always the diagnosis or treatment that you need. I doubt that motivating physicians to accede to patients’ wishes is the right way to go. “Give the lady what she wants” is fine in retail. In the professions, not so much.

2 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    There has not been a good correlation between patient satisfaction and good outcomes. Some studies have suggested the opposite. In our own case, for three years running our outcomes on our OB floor were in the 99th percentile, but satisfaction scores were in the 20th percentile range. In essence, I had a bunch of cranky older docs who hated being up at night, but did a great job. Some of them have retired, our outcomes are now 90th percentile or so, and satisfaction scores are 50th percentile. I don’t really want to run a department where we have 99th percentile satisfaction scores, but 20th percentile outcomes, even though it would mean big bucks for us.

    Steve

  • Exactly what I’m talking about.

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