Forget Obamacare, carrier mergers and wellness programs.
Yelp is about to change the way we look at health care.
In a wonderfully consumer-friendly move, Yelp recently announced consumers would be able to search hospitals the same way they look up restaurants.
Recommended For You
The feature is the result of a partnership with ProPublica, the non-profit investigative journalism outfit. According to Yelp, the information is compiled by ProPublica from their own research and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for 4,600 hospitals, 15,000 nursing homes, and 6,300 dialysis clinics in the U.S. and will be updated quarterly.
Though some of that information is available on government sites, putting the information on a popular, easy-to-use site gets the information in front of many more people, Yelp told various news outlets.
"Hover text on the business page will explain the statistics, which include number of serious deficiencies and fines per nursing home and emergency room wait times for hospitals," Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said in a blog post. "For example, West Kendall Baptist Hospital has better than average doctor communication and an average 33 minute ER wait time, Beachside Nursing Center currently has no deficiencies, and San Mateo Dialysis Center has a better than average patient survival rate."
The hospital data shows the ER wait time, the quality of doctor communications with patients and the level of noise in patient rooms, all of which is based on patient satisfaction surveys conducted for Medicare.
The nursing home information includes fines paid for serious deficiencies and any payment suspensions because of poor performance. And dialysis center data includes info about how often kidney patients were readmitted to the hospital and the rate of patient survival.
Like any breathing citizen with Internet access, I've looked up reviews on Yelp about everything from movers to hotels to local bars and lunch spots. And I wouldn't hesitate to look up hospitals or a nursing home — especially considering hospital and doctor quality is far more important than just how good that cheeseburger tastes (well, generally speaking…)
It's a bold move for the site — and also an amazing one. Yelp joins similar sites, such as analyticsMD, which has begun to post vital information and reviews for consumer consumption.
Yelp — and all other public reviews — of course, is no Godsend: the site is often criticized for being outdated and unverified. But adding government data in a much needed health care category makes this information more reliable. Of course there are some flaws: someone in a real emergency, for example, isn't going to poke around Yelp to check out wait times; they'll simply go to the nearest hospital.
But it's a move in the right direction — one where health data is readily available and in the hands of the consumer. And more consumer interaction and skin in the game is the right move for health care. And much overdue.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
