VIEWPOINT: What counts as online patient feedback, and for whom?

Abstract

Online patient feedback is quickly becoming pervasive enough to warrant serious attention. For many decades , patients have been asked and encouraged to fill out paper-based questionnaires to give feedback on the care that they received. These have been used for a number of reasons, including to measure how the service has been rated by the patients, and to suggest areas for improvement. They were seen as a good alternative to face-to-face feedback because their impersonal nature can allow patients to more comfortably give feedback about the staff who care for them whilst mini-mising social desirability effects. 1 As well as this, the usual power dynamics between health professionals and patients were thought to be diminished, and patients could, in theory at least, offer honest critique without fearing pushback, or negative consequences on their subsequent care. 2 More recently, with the advent of digital technologies and an increasing connectivity to the web, online patient feedback has been flung into the spotlight, stimulating research into how this might change current practice and whether it can lead to an increase in quality of care. 3,4 In theory, patients can now leave feedback using a website or app at a time and place of their choosing, with or without anonymity, rather than doing so in person at the hospital or local general practice. Consequently, within healthcare organisations, the jobs of patient experience leads, quality outcome and assurance managers, and data analysts, amongst others, are changing to assimilate feedback gathered online alongside more traditional methods, and with this there are new things to learn about how best to harness and use this online patient feedback to improve quality and outcomes for patients. 5,6