Patient Narratives in Yelp Reviews Offer Insight into Opioid Experiences and the Challenges of Pain Management

Abstract

Aim: To characterize Yelp reviews about pain management and opioids. Methods: We manually coded and applied natural language processing to 836 Yelp reviews of US hospitals mentioning an opioid medication. Results: Yelp reviews by patients and caregivers describing experiences with pain management and opioids had lower ratings compared with other reviews. Negative descriptions of pain management and opioid-related experiences were more commonly described than positive experiences, and the number of themes they reflected was more diverse. Conclusion: Yelp reviews offer insights into pain management and opioid use that are not assessed by traditional surveys. As a free, highly utilized source of unstructured narratives, Yelp may allow ongoing assessment of policies related to pain management and opioid use.

Keywords::

• opioids
• pain assessment
• pain management
• social media
• Yelp

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.