Business school Ph.D. candidate co-authors paper on e-healthcare effects on providers

Hoanan Yin, a UCI Ph.D. candidate in management, is co-author of a recent paper describing the effects of integrating online and offline services on the reputation of and patient demands on healthcare providers. E-healthcare platforms have begun to integrate medical services across virtual and in-person environments. Providers can perform patient consultations, schedule office visits, answer inquiries and manage relevant medical records online. The researchers analyzed patient preferences as well as provider-specific characteristics. Their findings show that online-offline integration, on average, increased patient demand for virtual services, decreased in-person demand and improved providers’ professional reputation. The impact of channel integration was weaker for providers with lower professional titles, and those who specialize in treating chronic versus acute diseases experienced higher online demand and reputational benefits but insignificant changes in offline demand. Ni Huang, an associate professor at the University of Houston’s C.T. Bauer College of Business, is the study’s corresponding author; and Zhijun Yan, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology’s School of Management and Economics, is co-author.