What Drives Trust in Vietnamese Hospitals: Linking Google Maps Reviews, Dissatisfaction Themes, and Survey-Based Service Quality

Hospital service quality is a salient public concern in Ho Chi Minh City. Yet dominant service quality models and survey instruments are largely Western-rooted and may underrepresent local bottlenecks in access, administration, and expectation setting. This study integrated large-scale, real-time online patient feedback with the rigor of survey-based research to analyze the role of hospital service quality in creating and enhancing trust, satisfaction, and loyalty in the Vietnamese context. There are two important analyses carried out in this paper. Study 1 examined 73,793 Google Maps reviews of 267 hospitals from 2011 to 2025. We used Vietnamese-language text analytics followed by human coding and qualitative data analysis methods, including sentiment analysis and topic modeling, to analyze the reviews. Common themes of dissatisfaction included excessive waiting time, problematic staff interactions and administration, environmental discomfort, and a lack of clarity regarding treatment. Study 2 relied on survey data of 203 patients and caregivers. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), we validated the three service quality dimensions formulated from the reviews: process and access quality; environment and sensory quality; and treatment and medication information. All three dimensions positively predicted perceived service quality. Treatment and medication information had the greatest effect. Perceived service quality led to expectation recalibration, which then enhanced trust in care, satisfaction, and loyalty. This study established a context-responsive framework for patient experience analytics in nascent healthcare systems.