Impact of Internet Hospital Consultations on Outpatient Visits and Expenses: Quasi-Experimental Study.

Background: Internet hospital consultations are emerging in China as a new channel for patients to access health care services. Unlike third-party health care platforms such as Haodf, Teladoc Health, and MDLive, internet hospitals seamlessly integrate patients' offline medical records with online consultations, offering a cohesive online and offline health care experience. However, its impact on outpatient visits remains ambiguous. While it may encourage outpatient visits due to better continuity of care, it could also reduce face-to-face visits because of the convenience of online consultations. Given that patients in China have the autonomy to freely choose their health care providers, it is critical for hospitals to understand the effect of this telehealth technology on outpatient visits.

Objective: This study aimed to analyze the impact of patients' adoption of internet hospital consultations on their outpatient frequency and expenses, and whether these impacts vary between urban and rural patients.

Methods: The data used in this study were collected from a public tertiary hospital situated in a southeastern county of China, covering internet hospital consultations from January 2021 to October 2022, and offline outpatient records from January 2020 to October 2022. The dataset also includes patient demographic information. To estimate the causal effect, we used a quasi-experimental design, combining the difference-in-differences (DiD) analysis with the propensity score matching (PSM). After performing PSM, 2065 pairs of patients (4130 patients) were obtained for data analysis.

Results: Our findings highlight 3 key results. First, patients' adoption of internet hospital consultations increases their frequency of outpatient visits by 2.4% per month (P<.001), and the associated expenses by 15.5% per month (P<.001). Second, such positive effects are more pronounced for patients residing in rural areas. Specifically, for every 1% increase in the distance between patients' residences and the county government (an urban center), the positive effect on monthly outpatient visits increases by 0.3% (P=.06), and the positive effect on monthly outpatient expenses increases by 2.4% (P=.03). Third, our post hoc analysis shows that rural patients living in areas with higher local health care quality experience a mitigated positive effect of internet hospital consultations, compared with those in areas with lower health care quality.

Conclusions: This study extends the research scope of telehealth technologies by investigating internet hospitals, which are characterized by the integration of online and offline services. Our findings suggest that patients' adoption of internet hospital consultations is associated with an increase in both the frequency and expenses of outpatient visits. In addition, these effects vary based on patients' urban-rural status and local health care quality. These insights offer valuable guidance for policy makers and health care providers in promoting and optimizing the development and operation of internet hospitals.