Table 1

Characteristics of US hospitals using Twitter

	Followers (n=2349)		Sentiment (n=297)		Proportion of hospitals in sentiment quartiles
Metric	Median	IQR	Median	IQR	Highest quartile	Lowest quartile	p Value
Region							0.392
Northeast	666	188–2686	0.278	0.124–0.377	0.27	0.31
Midwest	981	176–2881	0.296	0.263–0.332	0.33	0.20
West	437	118–1426	0.213	0.213–0.293	0.02	0.17
South	832	183–2522	0.300	0.280–0.334	0.39	0.31
Urban							0.379
Yes	1087	303–3069	0.293	0.244–0.334	0.77	0.93
No	364	70–1871	0.301	0.263–0.334	0.23	0.07
Bed count							0.037*
Small (<100)	439	72–2198	0.312	0.270–0.338	0.41	0.13
Medium (100–299)	622	166–2182	0.294	0.270–0.334	0.24	0.30
Large (300+)	1610	527–3592	0.280	0.222–0.331	0.35	0.57
Nurse-patient ratio							0.395
Above national	853	151–3078	0.301	0.270–0.338	0.59	0.39
Below national	741	182–2199	0.283	0.223–0.334	0.41	0.61
Profit status							<0.001*
Public	237	48–1549	0.263	0.112–0.299	0.06	0.26
Private non-profit	1115	281–3008	0.301	0.263–0.334	0.88	0.74
Private for-profit	327	103–934	0.280	0.281–0.326	0.06	0.00
Teaching hospital							0.242
Yes	1359	382–3498	0.285	0.223–0.332	0.45	0.67
No	527	119–2005	0.301	0.270–0.334	0.55	0.33
Medicare							0.617
Above national	605	138–2185	0.298	0.265–0.334	0.55	0.37
Below national	1187	247–3228	0.294	0.228–0.334	0.45	0.63
Medicaid							1
Above national	756	160–2459	0.295	0.227–0.338	0.61	0.65
Below national	819	187–2828	0.298	0.270–0.334	0.39	0.35

*p<0.05.