Do Crowdsourced Hospital Ratings Coincide with Hospital Compare Measures of Clinical and Nonclinical Quality?

Objective Data Sources To determine the consistency with which government-issued hospital quality ratings and crowdsourced ratings on social media sites identify hospital quality. Hospital ratings from Facebook, Google, and Yelp were linked with Hospital Compare (HC) measures. Study Design Principal Findings Fixed-effects linear regression model. Among crowdsourcing sites' best-ranked hospitals, 50-60% were also the best ranked on HC's overall and patient experience ratings; 20% ranked as the worst. Best-ranked hospitals had significantly better clinical quality scores than worst ranked hospitals, but were not more likely to be the highest rated in terms of HC's clinical quality measures alone. Conclusions Crowdsourcing sites and HC provide comparable information on patient experience; scores were less consistent in terms of risk-adjusted measures of patient safety and clinical quality.