A Study On The Price-Decision Strategy Of Dual-Channel Healthcare Services Supply Considering Public Welfare And Patient Channel Preference

The development of Internet technology has provided new ideas for addressing the uneven distribution of healthcare services in China.The opening and use of online channels for healthcare services can make medical resources more accessible,optimize the allocation of healthcare service resources,improve the utilization rate of healthcare resources,and help solve the problem of "difficult access to healthcare" for patients.With the gradual development of online channels,dual-channel healthcare service supply structure has become the main supply structure of the current and future healthcare service market in China.For healthcare institutions and healthcare management departments,how to coordinate the competition between online and offline channels through service prices,balance channel revenue and patient healthcare utility,and ultimately meet the healthcare needs of patients is a issue worthy of attention.The price of healthcare services as an important regulatory method and means has received much attention,and the pricing of healthcare services under a dual-channel supply structure is a very complex engineering project that deserves further research.This article first introduces the patients’ acceptance of online and offline channels,considers the public welfare characteristic of medical services,and comprehensively considers the government’s price limit policy on medical services.It establishes a Stackelberg game model for dual-channel medical service supply with offline channels as the main driver,and analyzes the impact of patients’ channel acceptance,the public welfare of healthcare institutions,and government price limit policies on optimal service prices and optimal revenue.The conclusion of the article shows that the dual-channel strategy brings more patient surplus to medical service resources,and the dual-channel medical service supply structure also gains more revenue.Furthermore,this article combines the patient demand function to construct a dualchannel healthcare service supply structure model,consisting of online and offline channels.It solves and analyzes the Stackelberg game model dominated by the offline channel and the centralized decision Nash game model.The analysis considers the influence of patient channel preference behavior and changes in the public welfare coefficient on the optimal decision strategy.It also compares the revenue values of each channel under different decision-making methods and obtains the optimal decision strategy under the highest price limit policy and under different decision-making methods.The conclusion of the article shows that the offline channel bears the main responsibility of public welfare in healthcare services.Adopting the optimal decision under the centralized decision-making method can obtain more patient surplus,thus generating greater social welfare.Finally,to address the demand uncertainty caused by patient behaviors sensitive to service wait times and service prices,a robust optimization approach was applied to construct a dual-channel healthcare service supply model that considers the impact of patient channel preferences and other factors.The optimal service wait time for patients and the robust prices for healthcare services in different channels were determined,and the effects of changes in patient channel preference,service wait time sensitivity,and service price sensitivity on the robust optimal decision-making strategy under demand uncertainty were presented.This article models and analyzes the optimal strategies under different decisionmaking methods for China’s dual-channel healthcare service market,taking into account factors such as the public welfare nature of healthcare services and patient channel selection behavior.The robust optimization method is used to derive a robust decisionmaking strategy for the dual-channel healthcare service supply structure under demand uncertainty.This study is expected to provide decision-making recommendations and theoretical support for the development of China’s dual-channel healthcare service supply structure,and promote the high-quality and balanced development of healthcare services in China.Ultimately,it aims to ensure that this important service,which affects the national economy and people’s livelihood,can benefit more people in a wider range of areas.