Consultation Pricing of the Online Health Care Service in China: Hierarchical Linear Regression Approach

BACKGROUND: Online health care services are a possible solution to alleviate the lack of medical resources in rural areas, and further understanding of the related medical service pricing system would contribute to improvement of the online health care community (OHC). Although many studies have investigated the OHC, the impact of physicians’ reputations and wage levels on consulting prices in the OHC has rarely been discussed in the literature. OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to explore the determinants of consulting prices in the OHC. We addressed the following questions: (1) Are the prices of online health consultation services affected by wage levels at the doctor’s location? (2) How does a physician’s online and offline reputation affect their consulting prices? METHODS: Employing a large-scale sample of 16,008 doctors in China, we first used descriptive statistics to investigate the determinants of consulting prices in their entirety. Hierarchical linear modeling was then used to investigate the determinants of consulting prices in the OHC. RESULTS: The empirical results led to the conclusion that if doctors have more elevated clinic titles, work in higher-level hospitals, have better online reputations, and/or have made more past sales, their consulting prices will be higher. Additionally, the wage level in the city in which the doctor is working determines their opportunity cost and therefore also affects consulting prices. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that the characteristics of the doctor, the doctor’s online reputation, and past sales affect the consulting price. In particular, the wage level in the city affects the price of the consultation. These findings highlight that the OHC is important because it can indeed break through geographical restrictions and give rural residents the opportunity to obtain medical service from doctors in big cities. However, doctors from cities often charge higher fees because of their higher opportunity cost. The results reveal that one of the most important functions of the OHC is to reduce the medical disparity between urban and rural areas; however, planners appear to ignore the possibility that rural residents with lower incomes may not be able to afford such high medical consultation costs. Therefore, the government should consider providing incentives to encourage urban doctors to provide discounts to rural residents or directly offer appropriate subsidies.