Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
ER Wait Times, Penalties, Noise Levels: Now Yelp Pairs Data On Providers With User Reviews
NPR/ProPublica: On Yelp, Doctors Get Reviewed Like Restaurants — And It Rankles
Dental patients really don't like Western Dental. Not its Anaheim, Calif., clinic: "I hate this place!!!" one reviewer wrote on the rating site Yelp. Or one of its locations in Phoenix: "Learn from my terrible experience and stay far, far away." In fact, the chain of low-cost dental clinics, which has more Yelp reviews than any other health provider, has been repeatedly, often brutally, panned in some 3,000 online critiques — 379 include the word "horrible." Its average rating: 1.8 out of 5 stars. (Ornstein, 8/6)
The Washington Post: You Can Now Look Up ER Wait Times, Hospital Noise Levels And Nursing Home Fines On Yelp
Yelp is adding a ton of health-care data to its review pages for medical businesses to give consumers more access to government information on hospitals, nursing homes and dialysis clinics. Consumers can now look up a hospital emergency room's average wait time, fines paid by a nursing home, or how often patients getting dialysis treatment are readmitted to a hospital because of treatment-related infections or other problems. (Sun, 8/5)
Los Angeles Times: Yelp Adds Healthcare Data For Hospitals, Nursing Homes To Reviews
Yelp has launched a new feature that adds healthcare information to its online reviews pages for hospitals, nursing homes and dialysis clinics. The San Francisco company said Wednesday that it will provide statistics for 4,600 hospitals, 15,000 nursing homes and 6,300 dialysis clinics in the U.S. The information is compiled by ProPublica from their own research and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and will be updated quarterly. (Chang, 8/5)
USA Today: Yelp, ProPublica Pair To Give Consumers More Data On Health Care Facilities
Just as Yelp can give you advice on which restaurant to go to for the best burgers, now it can give you advice on which hospital to go to for the shortest emergency room waiting time. Yelp announced Wednesday that it has joined forces with ProPublica, a non-profit investigative news organization, to incorporate additional statistics onto the Yelp pages of more than 25,000 medical treatment facilities pages. (Thadani, 8/5)
CNN Money: Yelp Adds Medicare Data To Hospital Reviews
How fast is delivery? How fast is an ER visit? Both questions can now be answered through Yelp. The company added data from Medicare and Medicaid, as well as independent research and opinion surveys, for nearly 26,000 hospitals, nursing homes, and dialysis clinics to its reviews site on Wednesday. (King, 8/5)
Modern Healthcare: How Does Your Hospital Rate On Yelp?
The online consumer review company Yelp is entering the high-stakes world of gauging patient satisfaction. Yelp will offer quality statistics for hospitals, nursing homes and dialysis clinics during a time when metrics are being scrutinized for their usefulness and accuracy. (Muchmore, 8/5)
