Exploring the influence of the online physician service delivery process on patient satisfaction

• Online health communities provide platforms for patients to consult physicians online
• We verify the effects of service delivery process from two perspectives, i.e., response speed and interaction frequency.
• We find that physicians’ response speed positively impact patients’ satisfaction.
• We find that the physicians’ interaction frequency positively impact patients’ satisfaction.
• We also investigate that disease risk moderates the relationship between service delivery and patients’ satisfaction.

The vibrant and rapid advancement of Web 2.0 technologies has made it possible for online health communities to provide convenient platforms that enable patients to consult physicians online. Healthcare services are related to issues of mortality and quality of life for patients, hence studies on online healthcare services and patient satisfaction continue to be fundamentally important as healthcare practices evolve and change. Although many studies have investigated the benefits of the online health community and motivation of participants, there has been scant research on the influence of the online physician service quality with regard to patient satisfaction. This paper is based on service quality model and the customer characteristics theory, as well as the analysis of data from the online health community. It verifies that online physician service delivery processes significantly affect patient satisfaction, specifically with respect to response speed and interaction frequency. Moreover, this paper examines how a patient's disease risk moderates the relationship between the service delivery process and satisfaction. The empirical results of this paper support all our hypotheses. This paper contributes to online service quality and e-health literature by investigating the effects of the physician service delivery process on patient satisfaction.