Patient perceptions of English dental services before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: a sentiment and topic analysis of online reviews

Aims This study aimed to determine how changes in English dental practice during and after the COVID-19 pandemic impacted patient perceptions of dental care delivery using sentiment analysis and topic extraction of online reviews.Methods Reviews were collected from the NHS (National Health Service) website using webscraping and the NHS digital application programming interface (API). Reviews were grouped into pre-pandemic (March 2019 to February 2020), during-pandemic (March 2020 to June 2022), and post-pandemic (March 2023 to March 2024) phases, and subcategorised to align with the dates of national standard operating procedures. The AWS Detect Sentiment API categorised each review by sentiment and non-negative matrix factorisation was used to identify topics in positive and negative reviews.Results In total, 48,862 reviews were analysed. A statistically significant shift in patient sentiment was observed across the periods. While reviews were consistently positive (81.52% pre, 82.88% during, 82.48% post), the proportion of negative reviews showed a significant decrease (13.87% pre versus 9.72% post, p <0.001). For negative reviews, staff behaviour and professionalism were prevalent topics in all time periods. During the pandemic, topics of treatment costs and poor communication emerged. In positive reviews, patient comfort and anxiety management were consistently identified. Appreciation for COVID-19 precautions emerged as a new theme during the pandemic.Conclusions This research identifies interpersonal and operational factors as the primary drivers of patient satisfaction post-pandemic. Our findings provide a clear directive for quality improvement: dental practices can significantly enhance patient experience by optimising appointment systems to reduce friction and investing in staff training focused on effective communication and managing patient expectations. These non-clinical areas represent the most impactful targets for improving patient satisfaction in NHS dentistry.