Impact on Online Physicians During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Differences-in-Differences Model (Preprint)
Authors: Ren Dixuan , Ma 2nd Baolong 
Published: February 2022

BACKGROUND

In early 2020, the new crown pneumonia epidemic is raging, more contagious, more ways of transmission, prevention and control means are inevitably stretched, health care workers are also scared to go to work, some places do not even support usually offline health care. In recent years, with the advanced Internet technology and the rise of 5G technology, it is a good time to take advantage of web-based healthcare. A sudden outbreak of a new form of coronary pneumonia has thrown web-based health care into the "limelight".

OBJECTIVE

This paper focuses on the impact of the epidemic on doctors' online and offline services. This paper implements a natural experimental design based on the temporary closure of offline medical consultation services during the epidemic and the full implementation of appointment events to explore the impact of restricted offline outpatient medical consultation services on physician of online medical consultation services, thus revealing the interactive impact of online and offline channels of medical consultation services. The impact of the epidemic was assessed using propensity value matching analysis combined with differences-in-differences method and differences-in-differences-in differences method.

METHODS

The implementation of offline medical restriction events in Beijing provided an opportunity to study the relationship between offline and online medical consultation services. This paper obtains information on online services and personal information of doctors from the Good Doctor website between two months before and two months after the imposition of the offline medical restriction. Personal information on doctors is collected monthly, with information on a total of 96,860 doctors, of which 10,890 are from Beijing, i.e. the treatment group.

RESULTS

The coefficient of the treatment effect is positive and insignificant, indicating that there is no difference in online service sales between the two groups after using the PSM method to control for differences in physicians' skill levels and the value of online consulting service products between the treatment and control groups. The coefficient of the interaction term was significantly 0.256, indicating that offline medical restrictions led to an increase in online medical consultation sales by physicians in the treatment group. To obtain the magnitude of the reform effect, this paper calculates the cross-elasticity of online medical consultation sales, with the effect of offline restrictions on online consultation sales being 29.18, the reform resulted in a 29.18% increase in sales of online consulting services. About the differences-in-differences-in-differences model. According to the analysis of the triple difference method results, it indicates that compare to physicians who have been opening their personal homepages for a longer period of time, the effect of offline medical restrictions on the increase of online service sales is greater for doctors who have been opening their personal homepages for a shorter period of time.

CONCLUSIONS

The frequency and scope of doctors' online use of medical consultation services have been rapidly popularized, that is, in case of public health emergencies, online health consultation services can replace and supplement offline outpatient consultation services. Moreover, the impact of COVID-19 on physicians' online engagement wanes as longevity of online service increase.The integration of "Internet + medical health" has not only profoundly benefited the health of all people, but also provided a powerful tool to help the implementation of the "Health China" strategy. This study is not only a good reference for the development and regulation of the industry, but also can make more people pay attention to the development of the Internet industry.

CLINICALTRIAL

none