Abstract
Given the negative utilitarianism and difficulty in maintaining long-term loyalty, hospitals resort to a variety of images that define and redefine their relationship strategies in order to stay patient-centric. As in any other sector, in healthcare, patients play an important role in service design and delivery. The basic services of medical appointment scheduling, online payment and health information search are recognized as one of the most important elements that increase patient footfall, service planning, patient satisfaction and their continued usage, in particular in developing economies such as India. This study seeks to understanding the basic e-Health services continuance usage intention among patients by integrating the Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and extending them by including certain external variables. With a well-structured questionnaire, a survey of 453 respondents – out-patients and care-givers, who should have used e-Health services at least once, in particular, visited multispecialty hospitals, revealed that along with the ECM and TAM constructs such as satisfaction, confirmation, perceived ease-of-use, and perceived usefulness, the external variables such as trust, social influence, perceived service quality, and perceived privacy and security had a significant influence (p < 0.05) on e-Health services continuance usage. The main findings of the study contribute to developing and empirically testing a model that explains the basic process of motivating the e-Health service users for continuance usage intention.
Highlights
Healthcare sector, in emerging economies like India- where health rate is poor, potential is more and technological advancements are faster, hospitals competitively seek newer avenues to deliver new, effective and efficient healthcare services (Martínez-Caro, Cegarra-Navarro, & Solano-Lorente, 2013)
With a well-structured questionnaire, a survey of 453 respondents – out-patients and care-givers, who should have used e-Health services at least once, in particular, visited multispecialty hospitals, revealed that along with the Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) constructs such as satisfaction, confirmation, perceived ease-of-use, and perceived usefulness, the external variables such as trust, social influence, perceived service quality, and perceived privacy and security had a significant influence (p < 0.05) on e-Health services continuance usage
The continuance usage is significant due to the following reasons: (a) Non-acceptance of e-health services, would lead to huge financial / resource losses for the hospitals (Boyce, Browne, & Greenhalgh, 2014); (b) Though the consumers adopt the e-services, the technological developments compel hospitals to continuously upgrade for sustained continuance usage (Zhang, Lu, Gupta, & Gao, 2015). It has become essential for the healthcare sector to identify and understand the requirement of the patients to sustain in the competitive market
Summary
Healthcare sector, in emerging economies like India- where health rate is poor, potential is more and technological advancements are faster, hospitals competitively seek newer avenues to deliver new, effective and efficient healthcare services (Martínez-Caro, Cegarra-Navarro, & Solano-Lorente, 2013). The continuance usage is significant due to the following reasons: (a) Non-acceptance of e-health services (adoption and post-adoption), would lead to huge financial / resource losses for the hospitals (Boyce, Browne, & Greenhalgh, 2014); (b) Though the consumers adopt the e-services, the technological developments compel hospitals to continuously upgrade for sustained continuance usage (Zhang, Lu, Gupta, & Gao, 2015) It has become essential for the healthcare sector to identify and understand the requirement of the patients to sustain in the competitive market. To exthis need to identify the post-adoption behavior tend ECM, the TAM model is considered, as it is (continuance usage behavior), this research ex- the preferred model over other behavioral intenplores the factors determining CUI of patients in tion models such as the Theory of Planned Behavior adopting the basic e-Health services in India.
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