A recent article in The Washington Post highlighted that Yelp is adding government information on hospitals, nursing homes and dialysis clinics to its popular review site.  Patients can now look up  an emergency room’s average wait time, fines paid by a nursing home and other information.  Yelp is partnering with ProPublica, which has deeply mined government data to create surgeon score cards and to highlight financial links between physicians and the medical industry.  The review information ProPublica gains from this partnership will certainly result in more news stories.  While much of this information may have little or no relationship to the skill or the quality of care, providers can expect to see more information linked to third party review sites in the future.

Luke Campbell’s practice focuses on representing health care professionals in all of their business needs.  Please feel contact him at lcampbell@mpba.com or 206-682-7090.