Why and When do Patients Use e-Consultation Services? The Trust and Resource Supplementary Perspectives.

INTRODUCTION

e-Consultation provides a new way to deliver healthcare services online. With the help of e-Consultation services, patients can gain access to nationwide medical expertise that otherwise would not be available to them. As an online delivery approach, e-Consultation also provides a choice for patients to receive medical advice from online doctors immediately, no matter how far away from the hospital they may be or how late in the day it is. However, the adoption and usage of e-Consultation is still far from satisfactory. Therefore, understanding why and when patients use e-Consultation services are important research questions.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Considering that the choice of a healthcare provider is a serious decision, this research uses the trust perspective to explain the e-Consultation service adoption phenomenon. Specifically, trust is conceptualized as a second-order construct consisting of two dimensions: competence and integrity. In addition, e-Consultation is viewed as a supplementary resource to traditional off-line consultation services, and disease type as a contextual factor is hypothesized to focus the context where e-Consultation services are more suitable. A scenario-based survey was conducted to test the proposed research model. We obtained a total of 190 valid questionnaires.

RESULTS

Our results indicated that trust (p < 0.01) had a positive effect on the intention to use an e-Consultation service. Meanwhile, our results also indicated that the higher the disease is in rarity (p < 0.05), severity (p < 0.01), or urgency (p < 0.05), the lesser the positive effect of trust is on the intention to use an e-Consultation service.

CONCLUSIONS

Trust is the major driving force of an e-Consultation service adoption. When the disease is high in rarity, severity, or urgency, an off-line healthcare provider is less capable of providing meaningful, qualified, and immediate service. Therefore, there is a decreased positive effect of trust on the intention to use an e-Consultation service for those diseases.