Studies show: Hospitals with more Facebook likes have lower death rates
Posted by staff / March 5, 2013 Facebookpatient satisfaction
In some countries of the world (the US, in this particular case), hospitals can range widely in terms of quality. And from a patient’s point of view, discovering facts such as how hospitals perform and how patients feel about their experience, can be problematic. From patient satisfaction to mortality rates, stats can be hard to come by.
But a new study shows that a simple measure of Facebook “likes” correlates positively to both patient satisfaction and lower mortality rates.
When authors of a study published in The American Journal of Medical Quality studied the Facebook “likes” issue for 40 hospitals in the New York City area, they found strong correlation between a “like” and a more conventional survey question “would definitely recommend”.
One of the reasons could be, they supposed, that even though every discharged patient is given a survey and asked to choose whether or not they’d recommend it to others, “it takes a special kind of satisfaction for a patient to log on to Facebook, seek out their hospital, and make their recommendation public.”
Photo credit: tsaplia – Fotolia.com
40 WHOLE localized cases? This case of International representation is CLOSED.
I agree. 40 seems like a small pool. I would think that Facebook Likes would have more to do with the quality of the hospital’s marketing program than quality of care.
I’m a fan of hospitals being social, but this study begs the question …
If a hospital realizes more deaths, doesn’t that mean there are fewer people to click the LIke button for that hospital? Some hospitals take on the sickest patients, who wouldn’t feel like visiting Facebook when they got out, and who would have a higher rate of death overall.
Maybe someone should design a Facebook app to “Like” a hospital page after death. LOL They made one for Twitter!