Fei Liu1,2, Yingying Li1, Xiaofeng Ju1. 1. 1 Department of Business Administration, School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China. 2. 2 Department of Management & Marketing, Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: An online health community (OHC) is a unique social network that provides a platform for sharing healthcare information, communicating about health and offering health services. While many researchers have examined OHCs, the impact of patient reviews on patient consultation behavior in the OHCs has rarely been discussed in the existing literature. METHODS: A computer program was developed to download the required information. This process was conducted monthly to capture the variation in the dependent variable. RESULTS: By analyzing data from 907 physicians from the "Good Doctor Online" website, we found that online and offline patient reviews significantly affected the number of patient telephone consultations. In addition, disease risk significantly moderated the relationship between reviews and telephone consultations. Patients with high-risk diseases tended to pay more attention to offline patient reviews. In contrast, patients with low-risk diseases paid more attention to online service reviews. CONCLUSION: It is important to explore the underlying mechanisms by which online versus offline reviews influence patients to undertake certain behaviors. This study aimed to explore the impact of online and offline reviews on patients' consultation behaviors and examine the moderating role of disease risk. Our results have implications for existing health management and e-health literature.
INTRODUCTION: An online health community (OHC) is a unique social network that provides a platform for sharing healthcare information, communicating about health and offering health services. While many researchers have examined OHCs, the impact of patient reviews on patient consultation behavior in the OHCs has rarely been discussed in the existing literature. METHODS: A computer program was developed to download the required information. This process was conducted monthly to capture the variation in the dependent variable. RESULTS: By analyzing data from 907 physicians from the "Good Doctor Online" website, we found that online and offline patient reviews significantly affected the number of patient telephone consultations. In addition, disease risk significantly moderated the relationship between reviews and telephone consultations. Patients with high-risk diseases tended to pay more attention to offline patient reviews. In contrast, patients with low-risk diseases paid more attention to online service reviews. CONCLUSION: It is important to explore the underlying mechanisms by which online versus offline reviews influence patients to undertake certain behaviors. This study aimed to explore the impact of online and offline reviews on patients' consultation behaviors and examine the moderating role of disease risk. Our results have implications for existing health management and e-health literature.