TripAdvisor of healthcare: opportunities for value creation through patient feedback platforms

The objective of this study is to explore new opportunities for hospitals to use patient feedback platforms (i.e., digital platforms on which patients express their opinions on their care journeys). Patient feedback platforms generate an ever-expanding amount of data on patient experience of care that is currently unused by most hospital or their business intelligence unit.

We used the methodological approach of netnography on the negative feedback received by one hospital combined with interviews to identify the potential value of the data generated by the patient feedback platform.

The main findings are that a digital feedback platform serves as a source of data to indicate: (1)Where to act (by localizing the negative comments), (2) On what to act (what thematic provides satisfaction and therefore is to be kept; or causes dissatisfaction and thus is to be improved), and (3) How to innovate (ideas about new practices to implement). It becomes evident that the platforms are developing a service to help hospitals make sense of this raw data and that a hospital can use patient feedback from other hospitals to improve their own practices.

The first implication of our results is that patient feedback platforms generate a complementary type of feedback (i.e. based on patient perception and not empirical fact), as well as a source of data (i.e., patients' external spontaneous feedback and not internally controlled survey feedback) for the Business Intelligence unit engaged in the transformation of the hospital towards patient-centered care. The second implication is that these platforms create a feedback network effect (i.e. A patient's feedback can be used by hospitals other than the focal hospital concerned by that feedback, therefore increasing the overall value of the platform). The third implication is that digital transformation is enabled not only by data generation on the platform but also by data analysis services provided by the third party that runs the platform.