School of Information Management and Engineering, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China.
Institute of Fintech, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Feb 19;17(4):1326. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17041326.
Online health communities allow doctors to fully use existing medical resources to serve remote patients. They broaden and diversify avenues of interaction between doctors and patients using Internet technology, which have built an online medical consultation market. In this study, the theory of supply and demand was adopted to explore how market conditions of online doctor resources impact price premiums of doctors' online service. Then, we investigated the effect of the stigmatized diseases. We used resource supply and resource concentration to characterize the market conditions of online doctor resources and a dummy variable to categorize whether the disease is stigmatized or ordinary. After an empirical study of the dataset (including 68,945 doctors), the results indicate that: (1) the supply of online doctor resources has a significant and negative influence on price premiums; (2) compared with ordinary diseases, doctors treating stigmatized diseases can charge higher price premiums; (3) stigmatized diseases positively moderate the relationship between resource supply and price premiums; and (4) the concentration of online doctor resources has no significant influence on price premiums. Our research demonstrates that both the market conditions of online doctor resources and stigmatized diseases can impact price premiums in the online medical consultation market. The findings provide some new and insightful implications for theory and practice.
在线健康社区使医生能够充分利用现有医疗资源为远程患者提供服务。它们利用互联网技术拓宽和多样化了医患之间的互动途径，建立了在线医疗咨询市场。在这项研究中，采用供求理论探讨了在线医生资源的市场状况如何影响医生在线服务的价格溢价。然后，我们调查了受污名化疾病的影响。我们使用资源供应和资源集中来描述在线医生资源的市场状况，并使用虚拟变量来分类疾病是否受污名化或普通。在对数据集（包括 68945 名医生）进行实证研究后，结果表明：（1）在线医生资源的供应对价格溢价有显著的负向影响；（2）与普通疾病相比，治疗受污名化疾病的医生可以收取更高的价格溢价；（3）受污名化疾病正向调节资源供应与价格溢价之间的关系；（4）在线医生资源的集中程度对价格溢价没有显著影响。我们的研究表明，在线医生资源的市场状况和受污名化疾病都可以影响在线医疗咨询市场的价格溢价。研究结果为理论和实践提供了一些新的有见地的启示。
