Aggregated online patient feedback, including social media platforms, can provide a collective judgment that helps identify hospitals with risks to quality of care, which may require inspections, according a study published in BMJ Quality & Safety.
United Kingdom-based researchers used a patient voice tracking system, which combined patient feedback from NHS Choices, Patient Opinion, Facebook and Twitter to form a near real-time collective judgment score for acute hospitals and trusts on any given date.
The researchers conducted a logistic regression analysis of the relationship between the collective judgment score on the start date of 456 hospital and trust inspections and the outcomes of the inspections.
The study shows aggregating patient feedback increased the volume and diversity of patient-centered insights into the quality of care. There was a positive association between the collective judgment score and subsequent inspection outcomes.
"The collective judgment score can successfully identify a high-risk group of organizations for inspection, is available in near real time and is available at a more granular level than the majority of existing data sets. The collective judgment score could therefore be used to help prioritize inspections," study authors concluded.