The Social and Economic Value of Online Healthcare Consultation Platforms
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Abstract:
The intersection of healthcare and the Internet, best exemplified by online healthcare platforms, provides enormous potential for transforming health service and improving healthcare outcomes. Ranging from peer-to-peer patient communities to more general platforms that connect patients and healthcare professionals around general health questions, these platforms are gaining traction nowadays. There are, undeniably, significant interest in understanding the unique value generated by various online healthcare platforms. To the extent that online healthcare platforms are value-creating, past studies have predominantly focused on investigating the economic and social value of many peer-to-peer patient communities. While these studies generate significant insights, it is worth noting that peer-to-peer patient communities have inherently more dynamic and complex user interactions between patients and physicians that have impact on offline hospital operations and latent behaviors such as altruism. These issues remain understudied in the literature. Thus, situated in the context of an online healthcare consultation platform, this thesis attempts to close this knowledge gap by conducting two novel empirical studies.
In my first study, I investigate the economic value generated by an online healthcare consultation platform in term of improving offline care outcomes. More specifically, drawing on the theory of physician agency, I examine the influence of such platforms on offline inpatient care. To achieve the research objective, I utilize data from a leading online healthcare consultation platform and a general offline hospital. Combining rigorous econometric and state-of-the-art content analysis, I find that the availability of online physician consultation information on such platforms leads to decreased inpatient length of stay as well as medication expenses. I also highlight a mechanism of improving the efficiency of physician service as a result of information asymmetry reduction. The findings of this study help supply initial empirical evidence in facilitating the theorizing of how online healthcare consultation platforms influence offline care outcomes. They also offer useful implications for healthcare practitioners and policymakers.
The second study aims to shed light on the unique aspect of social value generated by an online healthcare consultation platform in terms of influencing physician altruism. Lying at the core of modern medical professionalism, there is considerable interest in understanding the impacts of contemporary healthcare technologies on physician altruism. However, the dynamics of this impact are rarely captured in the existing literature. In this study, I seek to investigate the dynamic influence of an online healthcare consultation platform on physician altruism. Drawing on the cognitive evaluation theory, I focus on the dynamic influence of external rewards on the platform that give participating physicians external rewards. I characterize this dynamism using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) that allows the effects of these extremal rewards to change across individuals and over time. The results paint a dynamic picture of physician altruism in the modern online environment. The findings are essential to understanding the mechanism through which physician altruism can be influenced. Implications for the platform owners and policymakers are also discussed.