Abstract

Measuring patient satisfaction is an important quality improvement technique. The World Wide Web offers new approaches to understanding patient satisfaction and stories about healthcare encounters. In this paper, we suggest that there is a wealth of patients' stories being told online, in real-time, on social networking and on social rating Web sites. This patient-generated, publicly available information can complement existing patient satisfaction data and can provide insights into patients' values, perspectives and expectations - and can suggest ways to improve the patient's experience along the continuum of care.