Seminar (Dept. of Management Science and Engineering)

Theme：On-Demand Healthcare Platforms: Impact of Subsidized Q&A Service on Demand for Online Consultation and Offline Appointment

Speaker：Yixuan Liu (University of Texas at Austin)

Time：2020-01-09 08:30

Address：Room 706, Mingde Business Building

Abstract：

The emerging on-demand healthcare platforms connect patients with healthcare practitioners to provide quick access to primary care and consultation services. Many platforms offer patient subsidy in the form of a short-duration Q&A service at a meager price to induce user adoptions. Using a rich panel data from an on-demand healthcare platform in China, we investigate the impact of such service on demand for online consultations and offline appointments. We find that the subsidized service increases online service purchases and offline appointments by 4.7% and 8.7% in the subsequent month, respectively. Also, users’ expenditure on the online service in the following month increases by 15% after consuming the subsidized service, which highlights the revenue potential of such a service. Besides, we demonstrate the heterogeneity of spillover effects among different types of medical concerns and providers of different ranks. Our results shed light on the importance of such information-based services, which help manage the patient’s needs.