Exploring the Effect of Offline Medical Resource Distribution on Online Doctor–Patient Interaction (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The relationship between online health communities (OHCs) and offline medical care is unclear, since both provide doctor–patient interaction services and channels. By taking the advantage of information and communication technology (ICT), OHCs have been widely used. However, some physical medical resources (such as hospital beds and medical devices) cannot be replicated through ICTs. Therefore, it is worth studying how offline medical resources affect doctor–patient interactions in OHCs and how OHCs help to solve the problem of resource scarcity in and the uneven distribution of traditional medical treatment. OBJECTIVE This study aims to support that doctor–patient consultations in OHCs is influenced by the objective distribution of offline health care capital (accessibility and availability) and provide suggestions for how to allocate medical resources in practice through the judicious use of offline and online channels. METHODS This paper uses data from online doctor–patient telephone consultations and of offline medical resource distribution, by using empirical methods to demonstrate the accessibility and availability of medical resources will influence doctor–patient interactions in OHCs. RESULTS The empirical results support that the doctor-patient telephone consultation will be positively influenced by doctor’s online contribution (βcontribution=0.210, p<0.01) and capital availability (βbed=0.935，p<0.1), and interestingly, the spatial accessibility has an inverted U-shaped effect on it (βdistance=0.199，p<0.01 and βdistance2=-0.00449，p<0.05). Meanwhile, the robustness checks also demonstrate the reliability of our model. It is discussed that the use of OHCs is still constrained by offline medical resources, yet provides a channel for offline resources to flow from places with high availability to places with low availability. CONCLUSIONS The study explores the relationship between online and offline channels by investigating online doctor–patient interactions and offline medical resources. provides a theoretical and practical basis for understanding the interaction of online and offline channels of medical care.