JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Patients attempt to make appropriate decisions on the basis of their own knowledge when choosing a doctor; in this process, the first question usually faced is how to obtain useful and relevant information. This study investigated the types of information sources that are widely used by patients in choosing a doctor and how preferred sources differ in various situations.

Objective:

This study was designed to explore the types of information sources used to obtain information for selecting doctors. We addressed the following questions. (1) What is the proportion in which each of the various information sources is used? (2) How does the information source preferred by patients in choosing a doctor change when there is a difference in the difficulty of medical decision-making, in the level of the hospital, or in a rural vs. urban situation? (3) How do information sources used by patients differ when they choose doctors in different specialties?

Methods:

This study overcomes a major limitation in terms of survey technique by using data from the online healthcare community, data which are objective and can be obtained relatively easily and frequently. We used descriptive statistics to analyze the proportion in which different information sources are used. Then multinomial logistic regression models were applied to examine whether the proportion of use of these information sources changes in different situations. Finally, we exploited visual analysis to explore the questions of which type of information source patients prefer to use when they seek medical assistance among doctors with different specialties.

Results:

Our sample included 1,698,666 observations from 111,042 doctors, from 4,747 hospitals, in 31 provinces in China. Three main information sources were online reviews (OR), family/friend recommendations (FR), and doctor recommendations (DR), with a proportion of use of 32.93%, 23.68%, and 17.48%, respectively. Based on the outcomes of multinomial logistic regression models, difficulty of medical decision-making, hospital level, and rural-urban difference are significantly associated with patients’ preferred information source for choosing doctors. Further, the sources of information that patients prefer to use vary when they look for doctors with different medical specialties.

Conclusions:

Patients are less likely to use OR when medical decisions are more difficult or when the provider is not a tertiary hospital, the former situation leading to greater use of DR and the latter to greater use of FR. In addition, patients in large cities are more likely to use information from OR rather than FR. Among different medical specialties, for those in which personal privacy is a concern, OR are the most common source; for those related to children, patients are more likely to refer to FR, and for those related to surgery, they value DR more highly. Our results can not only contribute to aiding government efforts to further promote the dissemination of healthcare information but may also help healthcare industry managers develop better marketing strategies.