Physician voice characteristics and patient satisfaction in online health consultation

Abstract

This study examines the collective effects of voice and physician characteristics on patient satisfaction based on 35,597 voice-based medical services provided by physicians in a mobile health community. Results show patient satisfaction is positively influenced by the physician’s speech rate but negatively affected by the average spectral centroid of consultation voice. A fast speaker and speech with neural emotion are more likely to be associated with higher patient satisfaction than a slow speaker and speech with low and high emotion states. However, these effects are weak for physicians with high professional capital, which suggests a substitute role for voice characteristics.