Dive Brief:
- A recent study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine found that hospital Facebook ratings appear to be correlated with quality of care.
- The purpose of the study was to assess whether or not there was a relationship between Facebook ratings and 30-day admission rates.
- Researchers found that each one-star rating increase on Facebook correlated with a more than five times greater likelihood that the hospital would have low readmission rates.
Dive Insight:
The researchers analyzed other data on the hospitals' Facebook pages and did not find a correlation between any of the other data and readmission rates. "While we can't say conclusively that social media ratings are fully representative of the actual quality of care, this research adds support to the idea that social media has quantitative value in assessing the areas of patient satisfaction—something we are hoping to study next—and other quality outcomes," lead author McKinley Glover, MD, MHS, a clinical fellow in the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Radiology told PsychCentral.