Higher Facebook ratings are linked with lower hospital readmission rates – US findings

Hospitals with low readmission rates are associated with higher ratings on Facebook, according to a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
These findings support to the growing body of literature suggesting that feedback on social media and hospital ratings sites can correspond to patient satisfaction and objective measures of hospital quality.
Experts used US data to detect 4,805 hospitals that were measuring outside the national expected average for unplanned readmission rates within 30 days, and assessed the correlation between their ratings on Facebook’s five-star rating scale and readmission rates.
Hospitals performing better than the national average on 30-day readmissions were more likely to use Facebook than lower-performing hospitals. The average rating for hospitals with low readmission rates was higher than that for hospitals with higher readmission rates.
Major teaching hospitals were 14.3 times more likely to be in the high readmission rate group. A one-star increase in Facebook rating was associated with increased odds of the hospital belonging to the low readmission rate group by a factor of 5.0, when controlling for hospital characteristics and Facebook-related variables.
After taking into account hospital characteristics and Facebook-related variables, a one-star increase in Facebook ratings was linked to a greater chance of the hospital having low readmission rates.
“Hospitals should be aware that social media rating may influence patient perceptions of hospitals and potentially their health care choices,” says Dr McKinley Glover, one of the study authors. “Hospitals and other health care organizations should also be aware of the potential message they send by not using social media.”

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