JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The Internet is changing the way information is delivered to consumers and the way consumers act on information. Due to the convenience, immediacy, and interactivity of the Internet, more and more consumers are turning to it to seek health information. Online health information has become an important information source for medical decision-making. Much of the previous research on online health information seeking has focused on understanding the people who seek health information online and how they use online health information, but little is known about whether customers make better decisions when using online health information sources.

Objective:

Internet information is important for people seeking health information, but its specific role in decision-making has not been sufficiently studied. We examined the role online information sources play in health decision-making. Specifically, we investigated the relationship between online information sources and patient satisfaction, as well as their moderating effects compared to those of other information sources.

Methods:

Our sample was collected from the Haodf website (www.haodf.com), which is one of the most well-known online healthcare communities in China. This OHC lets patients share their treatment experiences with others by writing reviews of doctors. We use descriptive statistics to analyze our major variables include physicians’ personal information, information sources, and patient satisfaction with treatment effects and doctor attitudes. Then using logistic regression analysis, we conducted the longitudinal data on 54,027 physicians and 952,877 patient reviews from 3,525 hospitals in 31 provinces to test a proposed research model.

Results:

The results showed that patient satisfaction was generally lower for individuals who found a doctor through online information sources. Therefore, we suggest that patients consider the doctor’s quality, the doctor’s popularity, and patient involvement. Furthermore, we found that the doctor’s popularity had a negative moderating effect between online information sources and patient satisfaction, while patient participation had a positive moderating effect between online information sources and patient satisfaction.

Conclusions:

This study is the first to use large-scale online healthcare community data to investigate the impact of online information sources on patient satisfaction. Although the Internet has become an important channel for users to obtain health information, our empirical results have found an interesting result that patients who found a doctor through online information sources were generally less satisfied. One of the possible reasons for this is that online information may be wrong or inaccurate. Therefore, relevant professional authorities should monitor and evaluate the quality of information and enhance the accuracy of online health information. In addition, patients should attempt to break the “bandwagon effect” and choose a doctor who meets their needs. From the perspective of the online healthcare community manager, the recommendation system can be used to increase the exposure of low-popular doctors, so that patients can also filter by region, gender, specialty to find doctors that are more suitable for them. Finally, encouraging patient participation is the focus of healthcare information seeking to improve the quality of healthcare and services.