The relationship between patient donation and satisfaction with online healthcare service quality

Abstract

We explored how donation relates to patient satisfaction with the quality of process and outcome in an online healthcare service. Using a dataset of 496,723 patient consultation records collected from ChunyuDoctor, which is among the largest of the Chinese mobile healthcare applications, we conducted a multiple regression and found that patient satisfaction with both process and outcome jointly influenced their donation. We also found that higher quality satisfaction levels meant paying patients were more likely to donate than were free patients. Our results also showed satisfaction with the quality of the process and the outcome had an equal impact on patient donation for the free patients, but the impact of process quality was greater than that of outcome quality for the paying patients, suggesting the importance of enhancing the quality of the process in an online healthcare service. Implications of the findings are discussed.