Understanding resilience of physician-driven online healthcare communities under exogenous shock

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgent need for healthcare entities to develop resilient strategies to cope with disruptions caused by the pandemic. This study focuses on the digital resilience of certified physicians who adopted online healthcare communities (OHCs) to acquire patients and conduct telemedicine services in the pandemic. We synthesized the resilience literature and identified two effects of digital resilience: the resistance effect and the recovery effect. We collected a proprietary dataset that matches online and offline data sources to study the digital resilience of physicians. A difference-in-differences (DID) analysis shows that physicians who adopted an OHC had strong resistance and recovery effects in the pandemic. In particular, these physicians had 46.2% less reduction in medical consultations in the immediate period and 29.7% more bounce back in the subsequent period, respectively, after the COVID-19 outbreak than physicians who did not adopt an OHC. We further analyzed the sources of physicians' digital resilience by distinguishing between new and existing patients from both online and offline channels. Our subgroup analysis shows that, in general, digital resilience is more pronounced when physicians have stronger online reputations or more positive interactions with patients on the OHC platform, providing further support of the mechanisms underlying digital resilience. Our research has significant theoretical and managerial implications that extend beyond the pandemic context.