The effect of communication between doctor and patient on patient's medical care use

Abstract

Although rapidly developing information technologies, like the Internet, can improve the patient's access to health information, a patient still doesn't have enough ability to appropriately use health information. Hence doctors' efforts to help patient understand and interpret medical information by efficiently communicating with patient might enhance the patient's ability to utilize relevant medical information by which the patient's use of medical care would be affected. Furthermore, by manipulating doctor's payment method, doctor's effort of effectively communicating with patient would be affected and in turn patient's medical care use would be affected. This research seeks to determine whether a doctor's effort mentioned above can affect the patient's use of medical care, and in the policy perspective, whether the doctor's payment method can affect effort level provided to patients. The empirical results suggest the doctor's rate of supply-side cost sharing, representing a doctor's financial constraint, has a statistically significant positive effect on doctor's effort level and the doctor's effort level in turn has a statistically significant negative effect on medical care use of those patients who are prone to overuse it.

Notes

¹ For convenience, I denote patient as he and doctor as she in this article.

² In this article, I will focus on the individual's use of curative medical care, such as the care for sickness, injury or other health problem.