Understanding patient feedback by analyzing hospital reviews

Understanding patient feedback has never been more important for healthcare providers. Individuals have never had so much choice when it comes to selecting where they get treatment. Additionally, health insurance firms will only recommend and designate provision that offers great outcomes — or risk customers switching policies.

There are many areas of patient feedback providers should track. One growing, very visible source of feedback are online hospital reviews. They provide a window for patients and insurance providers to size up care options, making it vital for hospitals to know what patients are saying about them.

However, manually sifting through reviews is a time-consuming process. Patient feedback software, such as text analytics tools like the Relative Insight platform, help you to analyze, quantify and visualize information from healthcare populations. This can help you to improve your healthcare facilities.

To demonstrate how to make sense of unstructured text data Relative Insight analyzed online hospital reviews for three facilities owned by Kindred Group: Kindred Westminster, Kindred St Louis and Kindred Central Tampa. To do this, we used Relative Insight Medical.

This feature is Relative Insight’s bespoke text analysis software for pharmaceutical, healthcare, biotech and medical device companies and agencies. The tool uses a specialized lexicon to better identify medical topics — denoted with a ⚕ symbol. This enabled us to identify specific medical differences – as well as more general variations – between each hospital.

By comparing hospital reviews for the three facilities, the platform calculates a relative difference score which outlines the topics, words, phrases, grammar and emotions – enabling each to quickly identify what they’re doing well and areas where they can improve.

Kindred Hospital Westminster reviews focus on rehab 31.9x more

Our patient feedback analysis of hospital reviews at Kindred’s facility in Westminster, Orange County identified three key areas of difference.

The first was the hospital’s focus on rehabilitation. Patients were 31.9x more likely to talk about ‘rehabilitation’ and the hospital’s ‘rehabilitation team’. They singled out the team for special praise, describing them as “amazing’, “wonderful” and “the best”.

“I would like to thank the rehabilitation team for being amazing. Emily in Rehab has been great and I really enjoy our therapy sessions. when she walks into my room, it brightens up my day.“

Westminster hospital reviews didn’t just praise one team. Reviewers were 2.0x more likely to use the word ‘also’, highlighting that they complimented multiple aspects within the facility.

“My treatment here was better than the previous hospital I was at. Also, I have really enjoyed the menu options that have been provided; the fish has been excellent.“

However, our patient feedback analysis found one element reviewers were unhappy with. They were infinitely more likely to use the word ‘dirty’ — meaning this didn’t appear in the other hospital reviews.

“Hospital is dirty, totally a place to make any illness a death sentence.”

While the Westminster hospital is generally garners positive reviews, it needs to address hygiene issues identified by some of its patients.

Kindred St Louis staff 3.6x more responsive

In contrast to its Westminster facility, Kindred Hospital St Louis reviews talked about its cleanliness 5.6x more overall. They highlighted the work ‘housekeeping’ staff did 4.4x more, while also talking about its good ‘hygiene’ 2.3x more. This cleanliness comes despite an aging building, which patients were 7.7x more likely to reference in their reviews.

“The facility was an older building with dated stuff. The rooms were dark and drab, but the housekeeping staff always had the building looking great.“

Where the hospital set itself apart was its staff. Patients’ were 3.6x more likely overall to praise the responsiveness of staff. They expressed this by discussing how quickly their ‘call lights’ were answered — with the phrase appearing infinitely more in Kindred Hospital St Louis reviews.

“The nursing staff was top notch, when I used my call light they answered my light right away.“

Performing patient feedback analysis using Relative Insight Medical identifies which medical topics are more prevalent in text data sets. For Kindred St Louis, patients were 3.5x more likely to talk about ‘skin symptoms’. This medical-specific topic captured patients’ descriptions of the ‘wound care’ provided at the facility, with this treatment standing out when compared to the other hospitals.

“I would most definitely recommend this hospital because of the expertise they have in the field of wound care. They explained my treatment every step of the way. I was impressed with the general knowledge of the staff.“

While reviews were overwhelmingly positive, patient feedback on the age of the building should prompt Kindred to consider renovating the hospital. Although it’s not impacting patient experience at present, it’ll likely become an issue in the future if not addressed.

Kindred Hospital Central Tampa reviews highlight physical therapy 2.2x more

Our patient feedback analysis also surfaced specialized medical topics in reviews for Kindred’s Central Tampa facility. These reviewers focused on ‘physical therapy’, which overindexed 2.2x more. They also talked about the hospital’s ‘physical therapy team’, suggesting this is its area of excellence.

“Kindred Hospital Central Tampa was lovely. I enjoyed working with my physical therapy team, Jasmine and Aeastly.“

The praise for individuals in the previous verbatim example was a common feature in these reviews. Patients named staff who’d provided excellent care 1.6x more, using words like ‘compassionate’ (4.7x), ‘kindness’ (2.7x) and ‘respectful’ (3.2x). While patients at all three hospitals thanked staff in some way, these were most prominent in Kindred Hospital Central Tampa reviews.

“I was treated with respect but most importantly with kindness, my wife and I are amazed. I would like to recognize Jasmine from OT, Jonathan from PT, Aeistly from PT, Umar the CNA, Yas my best RN and Maria, the lovely patient representative who made sure every day my wife was informed of my progress.“

Reviewers also commented on the level of service they received. They were infinitely more likely to use the phrase ‘high quality’ and described service as ‘premium’ 3.9x more. While reviewers gave all three hospitals high ratings, it’s clear from analyzing the reviews themselves that Central Tampa is the best-performing of the three hospitals.

“Excellent! very attentive, professional and ethical. my mom was sent there after being admitted to the hospital. I would highly recommend this facility and their staff at every discipline. It’s wonderful to see quality and caring nurses and clinical staff work as a team to empower the patients healing!“

Patient feedback analysis identifies differences between three highly rated hospitals

By comparing hospital reviews using Relative Insight’s patient feedback software, we’ve identified areas where the facilities excel and complaints which they should address.

While all three are highly rated and performing well, the Westminster and St Louis facilities have areas where they can improve. Kindred’s Westminster hospital should focus on getting the facility as clean as it possibly can. In St Louis, hospital managers should look at ways to redevelop the facilities, with patients commenting on its dated appearance.

Kindred’s Central Tampa facility should be used as an example of how medical and admin staff deliver great patient outcomes. The group should look to mimic the hospital’s patient care strategy across its facilities to generate even better results.

Implementing each of these actions, only discernible using a text analysis tool, will make Kindred’s hospitals as attractive as possible to both patients and insurance companies.

Have healthcare-related text data that is too difficult or time-consuming to analyze? Get a free trial of Relative Insight Medical to see how you can get more from your text data.