Public hospital quality report awareness: evidence from National and Californian Internet searches and social media mentions, 2012

Abstract

Objectives: Publicly available hospital quality reports seek to inform consumers of important healthcare quality and affordability attributes, and may inform consumer decision-making. To understand how much consumers search for such information online on one Internet search engine, whether they mention such information in social media and how positively they view this information.

Setting and design: A leading Internet search engine (Google) was the main focus of the study. Google Trends and Google Adwords keyword analyses were performed for national and Californian searches between 1 August 2012 and 31 July 2013 for keywords related to 'top hospital', best hospital', and 'hospital quality', as well as for six specific hospital quality reports. Separately, a proprietary social media monitoring tool was used to investigate blog, forum, social media and traditional media mentions of, and sentiment towards, major public reports of hospital quality in California in 2012.

Primary outcome measures: (1) Counts of searches for keywords performed on Google; (2) counts of and (3) sentiment of mentions of public reports on social media.

Results: National Google search volume for 75 hospital quality-related terms averaged 610 700 searches per month with strong variation by keyword and by state. A commercial report (Healthgrades) was more commonly searched for nationally on Google than the federal government's Hospital Compare, which otherwise dominated quality-related search terms. Social media references in California to quality reports were generally few, and commercially produced hospital quality reports were more widely mentioned than state (Office of Statewide Healthcare Planning and Development (OSHPD)), or non-profit (CalHospitalCompare) reports.

Conclusions: Consumers are somewhat aware of hospital quality based on Internet search activity and social media disclosures. Public stakeholders may be able to broaden their quality dissemination initiatives by advertising on Google or Twitter and using social media interactively with consumers looking for relevant information.

Keywords: Health Services Administration & Management; Public Health.

Figure 1

Google National Search Trends for Hospital Quality and Reports, 1 August 2012 to 31 July 2013. Note: search volume data provided by Google Trends for national searches. Four terms represented the four most common keywords surfaced by Google AdWords related to seed terms “hospital quality”, “best hospitals” and “top hospitals”. Transient search increase in mid-July 2013 for “US News Best Hospitals” and “Hospital Ratings” coincides with release of US News’ 2013–2014 Best Hospitals rankings.

Figure 2

Google National Search Trends for “Hospital Compare” and “Healthgrades”, 1 August 2012 to 31 July 2013. Note: search volume data provided by Google Trends for national searches. Transient search increase in mid-January 2013 for “Healthgrades” and mis-spelled “Health Grades” coincides with release of Healthgrades’ Top Hospitals for Outcomes list.