Patient Activeness During Online Medical Consultation in China: Multilevel Analysis

Online medical consultation is an important complementary approach to offline health care services. It not only increases patients' accessibility to medical care, but also encourages patients to actively participate in consultation, which can result in higher shared decision making, patient satisfaction, and treatment adherence.

This study aims to explore multilevel factors that influence patient activeness in online medical consultations.

A data set comprising 40,505 patients from 300 physicians in 10 specialties was included for multilevel analysis. Patient activeness score (PAS) was calculated based on the frequency and the proportion of patient discourses to the total frequency of doctor-patient interactions. Intraclass correlation coefficients were calculated to identify between-group variations, and the final multilevel regression model included patient- and physician-level factors.

Patients were not equally active in online medical consultations, with PASs varying from 0 to 125.73. Patient characteristics, consultation behavioral attributes, and physician professional characteristics constitute 3 dimensions that are associated with patient activeness. Specifically, young and female patients participated more actively. Patients' waiting times online (β=-.17; P<.001) for physician responses were negatively correlated with activeness, whereas patients' initiation of conversation (β=.83; P<.001) and patient consultation cost (β=.52; P<.001) in online medical consultation were positively correlated. Physicians' online consultation volumes (β=-.10; P=.01) were negatively associated with patient activeness, whereas physician online consultation fee (β=.03; P=.01) was positively associated. The interaction effects between patient- and physician-level factors were also identified.

Patient activeness in online medical consultation requires more scholarly attention. Patient activeness is likely to be enhanced by reducing patients' waiting times and encouraging patients' initiation of conversation in online medical consultation. The findings have practical implications for patient-centered care and the improvement of online medical consultation services.