Your health provider likely has negative ratings on Yelp. Here’s why.

Health-care facilities received more negative Yelp ratings after COVID-19, and patient satisfaction still hasn’t returned to its pre-pandemic level, according to a new analysis by Penn researchers.

As part of the study, the investigators analyzed nearly 1.5 million Yelp reviews from 2014 to 2023 of more than 150,000 health-care facilities nationwide. They found that, up until March 2020, the average patient review was at least 4 out of 5 stars.

Before COVID, “the majority of people were having positive experiences,” said study author Neil Sehgal, a PhD student in the department of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science.

But after the pandemic hit, the researchers note in the journal JAMA Network Open, the majority of reviews became negative (less than 4 out of 5 stars), and remained mostly negative through the end of the study period.

“The numerical ratings just got much worse after COVID,” Sehgal said, with the rate of positive reviews going from more than 54% to less than 48% after March 2020. “Overall, people are having much more negative experiences — at least that’s what they’re saying on Yelp.”

Even though COVID-19 first hit our shores more than four years ago, it’s not a huge surprise that the health-care system is still feeling its effects, Sehgal said. “COVID fundamentally challenged and changed the U.S. public health-care system,” he said. “I don’t think that the health-care system has fully recovered.”

Although the authors are all based at Penn, they didn’t analyze data specific to this region. As of Dec. 23, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania has a rating of 2.5 out of 5 stars on Yelp. Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s rating is 2.2, and Temple University Hospital has a rating of 2.0 out of 5 stars. (Click here for a full list of Yelp rankings of Philadelphia hospitals.)

When Sehgal and his team reviewed the language of reviews, they saw that, after COVID, complaints increased about billing issues and insurance. This was particularly the case in urban areas with more Black residents, which would apply to the Philadelphia area, he noted.

The outpouring of negative online posts about the insurance industry following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson suggests that this frustration hasn’t abated.

That said, Sehgal noted that the study doesn’t show that health-care facilities did a poor job handling insurance and billing during the pandemic. “We don’t know that insurance and billing issues actually got worse after COVID,” he said. “We’re just showing that people are talking about it more.”

This isn’t the first dataset suggesting that hospitals have mixed reviews when it comes to patient satisfaction. A recent federal survey showed that hospitals in the Philly area are ranked below the national average by patients when it comes to doctor communication. That said, other surveys of Philadelphia residents have shown that most have had overall positive experiences during recent hospital stays, and would recommend their facility to others.

Health-care facilities would do well to pay attention to what patients are saying online, and take the complaints seriously, said Sehgal. Even if providers don’t look at their own Yelp and Google reviews, patients do, and often consult these sites when picking providers.

“We know that these types of reviews do shape patient decisions,” said Sehgal.