Chronic Pain Practices: An Evaluation of
Positive and Negative Online Patient Reviews
Authors: Orhurhu Vwaire 
Published: February 2021

Background: The role of patient satisfaction continues to play an important role in health
care quality measures. The use of online review platforms has been adopted by patients
to share their perceptions about the quality of care provided by physicians. Chronic pain
practice has unique challenges regarding patient satisfaction.
Objectives: The main goal of this study is to identify the themes associated with positive
and negative reviews of chronic pain physicians at publicly available online review platforms.
Study Design: A retrospective study design.
Setting: We evaluated publicly available online patient-generated reviews of chronic pain
physicians from Yelp and Healthgrades.
Methods: This retrospective study evaluated patient-generated reviews of chronic pain
physicians from 2 online platforms—Yelp and Healthgrades—between the September 1,
2018 through November 1, 2018. Ninety chronic pain physicians were randomly selected
from 4 diverse geographic cities in the United States: New York (NY), Houston (TX), Chicago
(IL), and Seattle (WA). Primary outcome was defined as high and low rating scores. Secondary
outcome was the proportion of positive and negative attributes (patient, physician, procedure,
and administrative attributes) that was associated with high and low rating scores.
Results: A total of 1,627 reviews were extracted from 90 physicians evaluated at Yelp
and Healthgrades. Of this total review, 1,296 (79.7%) were high scoring and (331) 20.3%
were low scoring. Chronic pain providers who were high scoring had positive reviews that
consisted of physician attributes (63.5%), administrative attributes (23.4%), and patient
attributes (12.2%). The highest proportion of the first 3 physician attributes associated with
high ratings were knowledgeable, helpful, and caring. Chronic pain providers who were low
scoring had negative reviews that consisted of physician attributes (41.4%), administrative
attributes (52.1%), and procedure attributes (5.2%). The highest proportion of the first 3
physician attributes associated with low ratings were disrespectful, unhelpful, and uncaring.
Limitations: First, this study looks at reviews of 4 large cities, thus we may have excluded
patient populations with substantially different preferences as health care consumers.
Second, it is impossible to confirm the validity of individual reviewers’ interactions with the
pain management specialist who provided care or validate the identity of the reviewers.
Third, it is very difficult, or even impossible, to tell if the rater is a patient or someone posing
as a patient, such as an unhappy employee or a business competitor.
Conclusions: Online platforms provide a medium that facilitates immediate communication
among patients. These platforms may provide timely data for chronic pain physicians to
gain more insight into the quality of care perceived by patients, thereby aiding providers to
improve on ways to optimize patient-care experiences and encounters.
Key words: Chronic pain practice, online review, patient review, patient satisfaction