ProPublica compiled the information from its own research and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Data that Yelp will display includes the number of beds, number of fines paid, number of serious deficiencies, payment suspensions, and emergency room wait times for hospitals.
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With this new offering, Yelp will provide customers access to information about hospitals, nursing homes, and dialysis clinics that could help them make more informed decisions about a hospital for a sick child or a nursing home for a user’s aging parents. Although ProPublica is typically associated with high-brow journalism and in-depth reporting for the New York Times or NPR, both companies agree they can gain a lot from each other.
And now Yelp has announced they are joining forces with the non-profit investigative news organization ProPublica to bring more statistics to Yelp pages representing at least 25,000 medical treatment facilities. It consists of data for 4,600 hospitals, 15,000 nursing homes, and 6,300 dialysis clinics in the United States, and will be updated quarterly.
Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP)’s VP of public policy, Luther Lowe, termed the feature as a two-way street. Therefore, the time gap is the shortest one. Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) has also added health inspectors’ scores on restaurant listings in twelve different cities, as well as, countries.
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Although the federal data is already available via Medicare, it’s often hard to navigate and Yelp’s search engine may get the information in front of more people so consumers can make better choices. The website and app is working with nonprofit newsroom ProPublica to supply government data for important information regarding health care providers.
