Using Twitter comments to understand people’s experiences of UK health care during the COVID-19 pandemic: Thematic and sentiment analysis (25 October 2021)

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in health service utilisation patterns and a rapid rise in care being delivered remotely. However, there has been little published research examining patients’ experiences of accessing remote consultations since COVID-19. Such research is important as remote methods for delivering some care may be maintained in the future.

Content

Tweets posted from the UK between January 2018 and October 2020 were extracted using the Twitter application programming interface.

The volume of tweets on remote care delivery increased markedly following the COVID-19 outbreak. Five main themes were identified in the tweets: access to remote care, quality of remote care, anticipation of remote care, online booking and asynchronous communication, and publicising changes to services or care delivery. Mixed public attitudes and experiences to the changes in service delivery were found. The proportion of positive tweets regarding access to, and quality of, remote care was higher in the immediate period following the COVID-19 outbreak (March-May 2020) when compared to the time before COVID-19 onset and the time when restrictions from the first lockdown eased (June-October 2020).

The study concluded that ussing Twitter data to address our research questions proved beneficial for providing rapid access to Twitter users’ attitudes to remote care delivery at a time when it would have been difficult to conduct primary research due to COVID-19. This approach allowed us to examine the discourse on remote care over a relatively long period and to explore shifting attitudes of Twitter users at a time of rapid changes in care delivery. The mixed attitudes toward remote care highlight the importance for patients to have a choice over the type of consultation that best suits their needs, and to ensure that the increased use of technology for delivering care does not become a barrier for some. The finding that overall sentiment about remote care was more positive in the early stages of the pandemic but has since declined emphasizes the need for a continued examination of people’s