6 points that should be taken care of while assessing online customer reviews of hospitals

Selection of good hospital is crucial to get a good medical treatment. My article on ‘5 points on how to select a good hospital’, describes important points that must be checked to select a good hospital. One of the key point in it is to check the online reviews of the hospital shared by other patients. While online reviews can give invaluable information about the hospital, it can sometimes be tricky in discerning right information. One need to be careful while basing their decision on online reviews. Here I have stated few important points that should be kept in mind while going through online reviews of hospitals.

1. Patient’s reviews can either be influenced by ‘how was the hospital’ or by ‘how was the doctor’. Hence, while assessing an online review, it must be noted if a specific review is because of the doctor or because of the hospital. This could be understood by reading some of the descriptions in the reviews. A good review because of the doctor, doesn’t means that the hospital is also good, or vice-versa. Hence, while selecting a hospital, reviews that reflects satisfaction with hospital and its processes should be considered

2. Adverse treatment outcome severely impacts a patient’s outlook towards the hospital. Almost all online reviews written by relative of a patient who died in hospital were negative and dis-satisfactory. So one should be cautious while looking at reviews by someone, whose patient had a death in hospital, as it may not reflect the hospital correctly

3. Cost of treatment is another factor that influence customer reviews. Patient’s expectation differs from hospital with high pricing compared to a hospital where treatment is heavily subsidized. Hence, one must not use online reviews to compare hospitals with significantly different pricing structure

4. There are some hospitals who respond to online reviews. This is a good point as it indicates that hospital is taking note of it and would probably be making improvements

5. Due to competition some hospitals get into the activity of posting fake reviews (either for themselves or for competitors). Hence looking for indications of a review being fake is required. Reviews that appear similar in context and appear together within narrow range of days, usually is an indication of being fake.

6. While reading reviews preference should be given the reviews that are latest and have described their experience in a bit detail.

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