Enhancing Public Healthcare Through VADER Sentiment Analysis: A Case Study on Patient Complaints.

This study investigates the application of Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner (VADER), a rule-based sentiment analysis tool, for rapidly analyzing patient complaints in healthcare environments. By leveraging VADER's efficiency in processing free-text data, the research examines how sent...

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Publicado en:Journal of Patient Experience Vol. 13; pp. 1 - 10
Autores principales: Coelho, João Vasco, Barbosa, Liliana da Costa
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Sage Publications Inc. 1/28/2026
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: 1/28/2026
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        atl: Enhancing Public Healthcare Through VADER Sentiment Analysis: A Case Study on Patient Complaints.
      aug:
        au:
          Coelho, João Vasco
          Barbosa, Liliana da Costa
        affil: Centro de Investigação e Estudos em Sociologia (CIES), Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal
      sug:
        subj:
          Public Health
          Quality Improvement
          Sentiment Analysis
          Natural Language Processing
          Patient Attitudes
          Feedback
          Portugal
          Human
          Hospitals, Public
          Data Mining
          Interrater Reliability
          Workflow
          Machine Learning
          Patient Centered Care
          Decision Making
      ab: This study investigates the application of Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner (VADER), a rule-based sentiment analysis tool, for rapidly analyzing patient complaints in healthcare environments. By leveraging VADER's efficiency in processing free-text data, the research examines how sentiment analysis can support digital transformation and enhance patient experience management. The study assesses VADER's effectiveness in detecting emotional tone within patient feedback, enabling early identification of systemic issues and informing data-driven decision-making. The dataset comprises 63 written complaints collected throughout 2024 from a key surgery service in a 10 000-employee public hospital in Portugal. Sentiment analysis was conducted using Orange text mining tools integrated with VADER. Three core findings highlight VADER's value: (a) its balance of efficiency and accuracy in sentiment classification, (b) its contribution to patient-centered care strategies, and (c) its support for process optimization, particularly in triage and prioritization workflows. These insights demonstrate how sentiment analysis can help build smarter, more responsive healthcare systems through enhanced digital capabilities.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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