Influencing factors and mechanism of doctor consultation volume on online medical consultation platforms based on physician review analysis
ISSN: 1066-2243
Article publication date: 24 June 2021
Issue publication date: 12 November 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to reveal the factors patients consider when choosing a doctor for consultation on an online medical consultation (OMC) platform and how these factors influence doctors' consultation volumes.
Design/methodology/approach
In Study 1, influencing factors reflected as service features were identified by applying a feature extraction method to physician reviews, and the importance of each feature was determined based on word frequencies and the PageRank algorithm. Sentiment analysis was used to analyze patient satisfaction with each service feature. In Study 2, regression models were used to analyze the relationships between the service features obtained from Study 1 and the doctor's consultation volume.
Findings
The study identified 14 service features of patients' concerns and found that patients mostly care about features such as trust, phraseology, overall service experience, word of mouth and personality traits, all of which describe a doctor's soft skills. These service features affect patients' trust in doctors, which, in turn, affects doctors' consultation volumes.
Originality/value
This research is important as it informs doctors about the features they should improve, to increase their consultation volume on OMC platforms. Furthermore, it not only enriches current trust-related research in the field of OMC, which has a certain reference significance for subsequent research on establishing trust in online doctor–patient relationships, but it also provides a reference for research concerning the antecedents of trust in general.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors greatly appreciate the associate editor and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and constructive suggestions, which have greatly helped them to improve the manuscript guiding them forward to future research. Additionally, this research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 71874018, 71942003 and 71772017) and the BUPT Excellent Ph.D. Students Foundation (CX2021106).
Citation
Wan, Y., Peng, Z., Wang, Y., Zhang, Y., Gao, J. and Ma, B. (2021), "Influencing factors and mechanism of doctor consultation volume on online medical consultation platforms based on physician review analysis", Internet Research, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 2055-2075. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-10-2020-0589
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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