Influencing factors and mechanism of doctor consultation volume on online medical consultation platforms based on physician review analysis

Abstract

PurposeThis 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/approachIn 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.FindingsThe 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/valueThis 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.

Using machine learning to explore the determinants of service satisfaction with online healthcare platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…However, with the rising consultation volume, the SHAP value declines continuously until reaching the minimum value. Thus, we reckon consultation volume has a strong negative effect on service satisfaction due to the limited distribution of health and medical resources (Wan et al 2021 ). And the number of free and fee-based consultations affects service satisfaction differently.…”

Research on patients' willingness to conduct online health consultation from the perspective of web trust model

“…In addition, some empirical studies have provided supports for the relationships between online health platform information, online trust and the willingness to do online health consultation. On one hand, previous studies have directly shown the significant relationship between the online information and patients' trust in physicians (27). On the other hand, studies have revealed that online trust was a driving factor influencing online purchase (28), which provided supports for the relationship between online trust and the willingness to do online health consultation.…”

A sentiment analysis driven method based on public and personal preferences with correlated attributes to select online doctors

“…Sentiment analysis According to the method described in Section 4.3 , it first needs to determine the topics in the review. Referring to previous relevant literature [ 29 ] and validated in training dataset annotation process, it selects and categorizes the evaluation information into four topics. Each topic will be briefly introduced in the following.…”