Yelp, a renowned online review platform, has long been recognized as a valuable resource for assessing the ratings of restaurants and local businesses. However, recent research has unveiled its potential in providing insights into essential public health services. This study, conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, delves deep into the world of Yelp reviews and their implications for the healthcare industry.

Uncover the Hidden Insights of Yelp on Public Health

How Yelp Ratings Reflect Public Health Trends

The online review platform Yelp serves as an exceptional tool to gauge how restaurants and local businesses are rated. But now, it emerges as a source of valuable information about essential public health services. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania analyzed a decade's worth of Yelp reviews from 2014 to 2023 for essential healthcare organizations across the US. These include urgent care centers, doctor's offices, diagnostic facilities, and hospitals covered by the Affordable Care Act. A total of 1,445,706 online reviews from 151,307 facilities nationwide were sorted by zip code. The findings were published in the journal JAMA.In general, a significant drop in positive online reviews (from 54.3% to 47.9%) was observed, coinciding with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Rural areas and those with a larger Black population were disproportionately affected. In Q1 2020, urban areas had around 51.62% positive ratings, while rural areas had around 46.52%. Both areas reached a record low in Q4 2021, with approximately 43.32% and 32.71% respectively. During the same period, facilities in areas with the lowest proportion of Black residents saw positive ratings fall from 56.23% to 48.97%, and those in areas with the highest proportion saw ratings drop from 43.14% to 33.29%."Before March 2020...over 50% of reviews were four or five stars," said Neil Sehgal, a doctoral student in the department of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science and the lead author of the study. "It does look like [the positive review rate] going back up, but it's still not to where it was before Covid."

Navigating the Healthcare Industry through Yelp

Healthcare Brew focuses on pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and its impact on hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed. Seghal and his colleagues also examined the content of the reviews to identify problems associated with the drop in patient satisfaction. The findings suggest that insurance and billing issues have increased significantly in predominantly Black neighborhoods. When analyzing the number of times keywords were mentioned in negative reviews, "insurance and billing issues" had the largest regression coefficient, around 0.13, indicating a notable increase over time. In contrast, issues like "customer service and staff behavior" had a regression coefficient of 0.05.Yelp reviews can capture data and insights around the qualitative aspects of patient experience that might be overlooked by traditional reporting metrics of healthcare systems or government agencies. For example, researchers from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Pennsylvania previously used Yelp data to understand experiences of racism at hospitals, highlighting where it occurs and who it affects."What's unique about online reviews is that they capture this raw, unfiltered feedback that traditional surveys might miss, like personal stories or frustrations. And so they hopefully give us a broader picture," Sehgal said. "They definitely don't replace traditional surveys—they just complement them."