Patient Experience and Satisfaction in Online Reviews of Obstetric Care: Observational Study

BackgroundThe quality of care in labor and delivery is traditionally measured through the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems but less is known about the experiences of care reported by patients and caregivers on online sites that are more easily accessed by the public. ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to generate insight into the labor and delivery experience using hospital reviews on Yelp. MethodsWe identified all Yelp reviews of US hospitals posted online from May 2005 to March 2017. We used a machine learning tool, latent Dirichlet allocation, to identify 100 topics or themes within these reviews and used Pearson r to identify statistically significant correlations between topics and high (5-star) and low (1-star) ratings. ResultsA total of 1569 hospitals listed in the American Hospital Association directory had at least one Yelp posting, contributing a total of 41,095 Yelp reviews. Among those hospitals, 919 (59%) had at least one Yelp rating for labor and delivery services (median of 9 reviews), contributing a total of 6523 labor and delivery reviews. Reviews concentrated among 5-star (n=2643, 41%) and 1-star reviews (n=1934, 30%). Themes strongly associated with favorable ratings included the following: top-notch care (r=0.45, P