The Patient Will Text You Now: Telemedicine and In-person Hospital Visits in China

In this study, I focused on the substitution effects between telemedicine and traditional hospital healthcare, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing two unique datasets at hospital level to combine the online health service provision with hospital in-person visits from January to August 2022, it aimed to address the research questions that Does online health consultations substitute hospital in-person visits? Specially, to what extent does hospital visits and online health service provision affect each other. Exploiting the fixed effect model and system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method to eliminate the endogeneity concerns and the dynamic nature of hospital visits, this study found that the provision of online consultations leads to a significant reduction in in-person outpatient visits. This substitution effect is highly evident in tertiary hospitals, where patients are more likely to substitute in-person outpatient visits with online consultations due to the availability of specialized services and wider adoption of online health platforms. This study provides insightful empirical evidence on the substitution effect between online health services and outpatient visits at hospital level, shedding light on the significant role of telemedicine on healthcare delivery system.