Omnichannel in Healthcare? Offline-to-Online Spillover Effects and Implications for Telemedicine in Treating Chronic Patients
研究通过多方法实证分析，发现医生采用线上线下全渠道整合能显著吸引新患者选择其付费在线咨询，但对老患者影响较弱，为医疗平台和利益相关者提供参考。
Despite an annual healthcare expenditure of over $4.1 trillion dollars on chronic patients in the United States alone, chronic diseases remain the leading causes of death and rising healthcare costs. With the potential benefits of online telemedicine consultation, we ask what value omnichannel integration—business approaches that use various channels synergistically to maximize customer value—might provide to healthcare for individual patients with chronic diseases. While new patients may have a lack of experience with telemedicine consultation, existing patients are familiar with the service on telemedicine platforms. How would this difference between new and existing patients affect their preferences for physicians’ channel strategies differently? Through a multi-method empirical approach including a preliminary survey study, econometric analyses of a 51 months’ panel dataset from a prominent healthcare platform in China, rigorous testing using various alternative measures and econometric specifications, and a descriptive analysis of two distinct patient journeys through channels, we consistently observed a strong and positive effect of physicians’ adoption of omnichannel integration on the selection of such physicians for paid online consultations by the platform’s new patients. Meanwhile, this effect among the existing patients of the telemedicine platform is much weaker. These findings are helpful for all healthcare stakeholders, including patients, physicians, hospitals, healthcare platforms, and policymakers.