Getty Images
Misdiagnosis hurts urgent care patient experience in 2025
Although the urgent care patient experience is still generally good, more online provider reviews mention misdiagnosis issues.
Problems with provider behaviors, such as misdiagnosis and not listening to the patient, are increasingly a topic of online provider reviews, a trend that researchers from reputation management company Chatmeter said could indicate a new problem in the patient experience.
Online provider reviews related to clinical staff are still net positive, Chatmeter said of its most recent report, which assessed 350,000 patient reviews from 10 major urgent care centers nationwide. However, there's a growing contingent of patients leaving bad reviews of their healthcare providers, alerting the researchers to problems related to patient safety.
For example, the number of reviews alleging improper care increased by 6.5% between 2024 and 2025, accounting for a total of 3% of reviews this year. Patient reviews indicating that their provider did not listen to them increased 10% from 2024 to 2025, while reviews mentioning the word "misdiagnosed" increased by 18%.
Importantly, online provider reviews indicating a poor patient-provider interaction are still generally rare, the researchers emphasized. However, the increase in patients reporting that their provider did not listen to them or misdiagnosed them is relevant as medical professionals consider patient-provider communication a key aspect of patient safety.
"Urgent care is one of the fastest growing healthcare segments, but these findings underscore how critical it is that providers listen carefully to patient feedback as they expand," John Mazur, CEO of Chatmeter, said in a press release.
Patient reviews highlight perennial issues with wait times, billing
As healthcare organizations, and particularly urgent care centers, focus on improving patient safety through attentive patient-provider communication, they must also contend with perennial issues around practice operations.
For instance, long wait times remained the biggest patient complaint, being mentioned in about a quarter of online reviews. Although this rate is high, it's a decrease from last year.
Patient reviews mentioning long wait times went down by 5% since 2024, the report showed, and sentiment around wait times improved by 2%. Still, patients expressed frustration particularly about how urgent care centers communicate about their wait times.
A similar trend emerged with patient billing, another area that can often yield bad reviews.
The report showed that patient sentiment around insurance and billing issues improved by 1%, and mentions of bad billing experiences were down by 3%.
However, patients continued to report problems with billing, particularly with receiving inaccurate bills, being charged the wrong co-pay, being billed multiple times and their bills not being correctly submitted to insurance.
Healthcare's digital transformation positively reviewed
One bright spot for the report is patient perceptions of digital technologies adopted by urgent care centers. Patient sentiment about urgent care center websites improved by 7.5%, while mentions of using an urgent care center app were up 33%.
However, patients did mention some misalignment across technologies.
Specifically, patients said that online appointment scheduling did not always align with the urgent care center's calendar and clinics didn't always honor booked times. There were also high volumes of comments flagging problems with digital patient intake and patient portals.
Perhaps most concerning were the patient privacy and HIPAA risks posted in online provider reviews. As online reputation management becomes important for providers, many are compelled to respond to online comments.
However, in an analysis of 2,400 comments left by healthcare professionals, 46% contained HIPAA violations. The most common potential violations included acknowledging that the patient received care and addressing the patient by name.
Healthcare organizations might consider different reputation management strategies that remove the provider from the process. Similarly, organizations might review HIPAA regulations with providers and design trainings tailored to prevent violations in responses to online comments.
Sara Heath has reported news related to patient engagement and health equity since 2015.
