| China’s medical and health sector is facing prominent contradictions,especially the increasingly serious supply-demand imbalance caused by the mismatch of medical resources.The information asymmetry between doctors and patients has led to the blind selection of large tertiary hospitals in big cities by a large number of patients with common and mild diseases,resulting in a waste of high-quality medical resources.In recent years,the rapid development of internet medicine has brought about a convenient communication channel for online medical consultation for doctors and patients.Under this mode,doctors and patients can not only obtain more information about each other to reduce the information gap,but also have a certain degree of freedom to choose,so that both parties can make personalized choices based on their own situations.This is conducive to solving the problem of mismatch of medical resources and extending high-quality medical resources to where they are truly needed.Specifically,online diagnosis and treatment services can alleviate the problems caused by the information asymmetry between doctors and patients,and provide reference and guidance for patients to make scientific decisions.At the same time,it also provides doctors with richer information about patients’ conditions,which is conducive to improving doctors’ subjective initiative and reducing the waste of high-quality medical resources.In the current research on patient physician choice in the field of internet healthcare,studies have mainly focused on the characteristics of doctors,with less attention given to how patients’ own conditions affect their healthcare decision-making.Additionally,few studies have explored the factors influencing doctors’ decision-making in the online consultation mode.Therefore,this paper focuses on the two-way selection problem between doctors and patients in the internet healthcare service model,exploring how both parties select each other based on their own characteristics and interests,thus achieving a match between healthcare supply and demand.Due to the massive participation of doctors and patients in the online consultation process,free online interactions between the two parties form a multi-to-multi network relationship between two sets of nodes.Therefore,based on social network theory,this study uses bipartite graph network modeling,constructs an exponential random graph model,and uses doctor-patient interaction data on online communication platforms to study the online interactive network formed by the two-way selection of doctors and patients.The study is mainly divided into the following three parts:(1)Investigating the characteristics of patient physician choice in the online consultation mode,and the influence of patients’ own attributes.The results show that patient physician choice behavior exhibits concentration tendencies and shared correlation effects.From the perspective of patient attributes,severely ill patients are more concerned about doctor consultation prices,professional levels,online reputation,and the medical development level in their respective areas.Patients in areas with lower medical development levels are more concerned about the online reputation of doctors or doctors in areas with similar medical levels.(2)Investigating the influencing factors of doctor selection behavior and the influence of physicians’ own attributes for patient selection in the online consultation mode.The results show that online doctors are more inclined to select patients with minor illnesses or those who use asynchronous consultation methods,affected by system factors.Doctors with higher professional levels are more likely to choose patients with severe illnesses,or those in areas with low to medium medical levels,or those using synchronous consultation methods.Online doctors in higher-level hospitals,under the call of the national hierarchical diagnosis and treatment policy,are more likely to choose patients with severe illnesses,those in areas with weak medical resources,and those using synchronous consultation methods.(3)Investigating the differences in the selection behavior of online doctors treating different types of diseases.The results show that,under the influence of system or personal factors,specialist doctors in chronic diseases and mental illness have different choices for patients in areas with different levels of medical development,compared to doctors treating other diseases.Under the influence of their respective environments,specialist doctors in chronic diseases have different choices for patients with different levels of disease severity and different medical development levels compared to doctors treating other diseases.Mental illness specialist doctors have different online choices for patients’ disease severity and their use of online consultation methods compared to doctors treating other diseases.This study aims to fully explore the various factors,such as doctor consultation prices,professional levels,hospital grades,online reputation,patient disease severity,consultation methods,and medical development levels in the patients’ respective areas,affecting the two-way selection of doctors and patients in the online consultation scenario.Ultimately,the research hopes to provide a theoretical basis for improving the accuracy and efficiency of online patient-physician matching,thus promoting the sustainable development of internet healthcare services. |
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