School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
Int J Med Inform. 2019 Oct;130:103951. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2019.08.011. Epub 2019 Aug 13.
Online healthcare has become an important part of healthcare services. Patients can access unlimited information reflecting a doctor's service quality in online health communities (OHCs). This information can reduce information asymmetry between patients and doctors, and further promote patient decisions. In this study, we focus on the patient's decision to switch from a doctor's online medical service to the same doctor's offline service.
We classify OHC information into objective information and subjective information. Following this, we investigate how these two types of information influence patient decisions to switch from a doctor's online to offline medical service, and explore the nature of interaction between the two types of influence.
We collected data from a leading OHC in China and constructed a longitudinal dataset to examine our research questions. To control for doctor heterogeneity and common trends across time, we leveraged fixed effects at the doctor level and monthly fixed effects in our models, respectively.
Our findings demonstrate a strong relationship between OHC information and patient decisions to switch from a doctor's online to offline medical service. Patients are more likely to switch from online to offline medical services with doctors whose subjective and objective information on their homepages indicate a higher quality (β = 0.001, p < 0.001; α = 0.019, p < 0.002). We also observe that patients prefer doctors who do not exhibit objective information that indicates low-quality service over those who show such information on their homepages, even though the chosen doctor provides a lower-quality service (α = -0.032, p < 0.006). Further, we find that the influence of subjective information on patient decisions crowds out the influence of objective information.
This study investigates the role of subjective and objective information on patient decisions to switch from a doctor's online to offline medical service and the interaction effect between these two types of information. This study provides valuable theoretical and practical implications.
在线医疗已成为医疗服务的重要组成部分。患者可以在在线健康社区（OHC）中获得反映医生服务质量的无限信息。这些信息可以减少医患之间的信息不对称，并进一步促进患者决策。在这项研究中，我们专注于患者从医生的在线医疗服务转向同一位医生的线下服务的决策。
我们将 OHC 信息分为客观信息和主观信息。在此基础上，我们研究了这两种类型的信息如何影响患者从医生的在线到线下医疗服务的决策，并探讨了两种类型的影响之间的相互作用性质。
我们从中国领先的 OHC 收集数据，并构建了一个纵向数据集来检验我们的研究问题。为了控制医生异质性和时间上的共同趋势，我们分别在模型中利用了医生层面的固定效应和每月固定效应。
我们的研究结果表明，OHC 信息与患者从医生的在线到线下医疗服务的决策之间存在很强的关系。患者更有可能从在线医疗服务转向线下医疗服务，选择那些主页上的主观和客观信息表明服务质量更高的医生（β=0.001，p<0.001；α=0.019，p<0.002）。我们还观察到，尽管选择的医生提供的服务质量较低，但患者更愿意选择那些主页上没有显示低质量服务的客观信息的医生，而不是那些显示此类信息的医生（α=-0.032，p<0.006）。此外，我们发现主观信息对患者决策的影响超过了客观信息的影响。
本研究调查了主观和客观信息对患者从医生的在线到线下医疗服务的决策的作用，以及这两种类型的信息之间的相互作用。本研究提供了有价值的理论和实践意义。
