Facebook Reviews as a Supplemental Tool for Hospital Patient Satisfaction and Its Relationship with Hospital Accreditation in Malaysia: A Nationwide Study

Introduction According to studies, social media is an alternate instrument for patient satisfaction surveys and is linked to a few quality care indicators. In Malaysia, however, there is little evidence to back it up. We hope to find a relationship between public hospital patient satisfaction and social media ratings, as well as a link between hospital accreditation and online patient satisfaction.   

Methodology We applied a cross-sectional design and gathered information from the official Facebook pages of 48 Malaysian public hospitals, 25 of which are accredited. Between 2018 and 2019, all patient experiences were collected through Facebook Review on the FB page. In Facebook Reviews, a customer recommendation was characterized as an online patient satisfaction. Using SPSS software, data were analyzed using Spearman correlation and logistic regression, with confounding variables adjusted for.   

Results The link between MOH-hospital patient satisfaction and online patient satisfaction was found to be significant and moderate (r = 0.35, p = 0.02). Hospital variables such as urban location (OR 1.85 (95%CI 1.40,2.43), p<0.001), tertiary hospital (OR 1.62 (95 %CI 1.12, 2.35), p=0.01), and hospital past Facebook ratings (OR 1.14 (95%CI: 1.06,1.23), p<0.01) were significantly related to patient satisfaction. When other covariates were adjusted for, however, hospital accreditation was not significantly linked with online patient satisfaction (AOR 0.95 (95%CI 0.77, 1.17), p=0.63).   

Conclusion This ground-breaking study demonstrates that Facebook reviews can assist hospitals with real-time insight on the quality of their service and patient experience. Accreditation, meanwhile, remains a necessary and frequently compulsory quality improvement exercise to improve patient outcomes.  

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