The Use of Mobile Health Applications to Improve Patient Experience: Cross-Sectional Study in Chinese Public Hospitals

BACKGROUND: The proliferation of mobile health apps has greatly changed the way society accesses the health care industry. However, despite the widespread use of mobile health apps by patients in China, there has been little research that evaluates the effect of mobile health apps on patient experience during hospital visits. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of our study was to examine whether the use of mobile health apps improves patient experience and to find out the difference in patient experience between users and nonusers and the characteristics associated with the users of these apps. METHODS: We used the Chinese Outpatient Experience Questionnaire to survey patient experience. A sample of 300 outpatients was randomly selected from 3 comprehensive public hospitals (3 tertiary hospitals) in Hubei province, China. Each hospital randomly selected 50 respondents from mobile health app users and 50 from nonusers. A chi-square test was employed to compare the different categorical characteristics between mobile health app users and nonusers. A t test was used to test the significance in continuous variables between user scores and nonuser scores. Multiple linear regression was conducted to determine whether the use of mobile health apps during hospital visits was associated with patient experience. RESULTS: The users and nonusers differed in age (χ(2)(2)=12.2, P=.002), education (χ(2)(3)=9.3, P=.03), living place (χ(2)(1)=7.7, P=.006), and the need for specialists (χ(2)(4)=11.0, P=.03). Compared with nonusers, mobile health app users in China were younger, better educated, living in urban areas, and had higher demands for specialists. In addition, mobile health app users gave significantly higher scores than nonusers in total patient experience scores (t(298)=3.919, P<.001), the 18 items and the 5 dimensions of physician-patient communication (t(298)=2.93, P=.004), health information (t(298)=3.556, P<.001), medical service fees (t(298)=3.991, P<.001), short-term outcome (t(298)=4.533, P<.001), and general satisfaction (t(298)=4.304, P<.001). Multiple linear regression results showed that the use of mobile health apps during hospital visits influenced patient experience (t(289)=3.143, P=.002). After controlling for other factors, it was shown that the use of mobile health apps increased the outpatient experience scores by 17.7%. Additional results from the study found that the self-rated health status (t(289)=3.746, P<.001) and monthly income of patients (t(289)=2.416, P=.02) influenced the patient experience as well. CONCLUSIONS: The use of mobile health apps could improve patient experience, especially with regard to accessing health information, making physician-patient communication more convenient, ensuring transparency in medical charge, and ameliorating short-term outcomes. All of these may contribute to positive health outcomes. Therefore, we should encourage the adoption of mobile health apps in health care settings so as to improve patient experience.