"We view this partnership with ProPublica, and other work we've done pulling in helpful data, as providing information for consumers in a helpful context" and at a critical decision-making point, Lowe said.
ProPublica's assistant managing editor, Scott Klein, called these kinds of partnerships a "mission critical role" for the Pulitzer Prize-winning organization.
"It is very much in our mission to get this data in front of as many people as we can," Klein said. "And when they're at Yelp, they're at a really great pivot point that they're using to make health care choices. We think our information can inform that choice."
The nursing home data come from ProPublica, and the hospital/dialysis center measures come from CMS. ProPublica helped point Yelp to the specific measures Yelp has added to its health care reviews:
Nursing Homes (propublica.org data):
- Number of beds
- Fines paid over the past three years
- Number of serious deficiencies over the past three years
- Denials of payment for new admissions over the past three years
Hospitals (medicare.gov data):
- Average ER wait time
- Quality of doctor communication, vs. state average
- If the rooms are quiet at night, vs. state average
Dialysis Clinics (medicare.gov data):
- Number of dialysis stations
- If they supply peritoneal dialysis
- Rate of patient hospitalization, vs. standard
- Rate of hospital readmission, vs. standard
- Rate of patient survival, vs. standard
In California, consumers could already look up plenty of specific metrics in health care at CalQualityCare.org, a service of the California HealthCare Foundation. But Maribeth Shannon with the foundation was anything but jealous when she heard about Yelp's move into the space.
"I was very excited it was out there," she said enthusiastically. "For a long time, we've been anxious to get these types of measures onto websites that consumers use anyway."
But there were at least a few bumps on launch day.
I tried to compare ER waiting times at different Bay Area hospitals, but most hospitals that came up on Yelp did not display it. The only one I could find during several minutes of searching was this one for San Francisco's California Pacific Medical Center. ("ER Wait Time" shown at lower right, 24 minutes.)
Jake Bograd-Denton, Yelp's product lead for the new service, said there were some technical problems, but that there should be steady improvement this week.
Shannon said she was puzzled by some of the measures that were chosen, especially pointing to the hospital measure about room noise.
"They're very 'customer servicey' measures instead of clinical care measures ... like patient safety," she said.
But overall, she applauded Yelp's new effort. Both ProPublica's Klein and Lowe of Yelp say this is only the beginning.
"I would love to get as much of ProPublica's data into Yelp as possible," Lowe said.
