Users’ perception on telemedicine service: a comparative study of public healthcare and private healthcare

Abstract

Telemedicine services have been applied in public healthcare and private healthcare. Despite the different characteristics of healthcare services, the service models have been designed very similarly. Telemedicine services should be designed to reflect the characteristics of their own and their users' perceptions of service. Thus, this comparative study was undertaken to examine the perceptions of telemedicine services between public healthcare users and private healthcare users. This study collected 192 samples, using paper-based surveys, from two groups: public (n?=?101) and private healthcare service users (n?=?81). We performed two independent samples t-tests depending on the group to measure the differences in satisfaction and continuous intention to use, as well as the perception of the telemedicine service. Multiple regression analysis was performed to compare influential factors in continuous intention to use regarding public healthcare users and private healthcare users. The two groups had significantly different perceptions of both perceived risk and satisfaction (p?<?0.05). Private healthcare users expressed greater satisfaction with telemedicine services than did public healthcare users, whereas private healthcare users felt less worry about perceived risk. Both groups perceived that telemedicine was useful and easy to use for healthcare service, expressing higher intentions to use. In both groups, perceived usefulness and ease of use had positive effects on continuous intention to use (p?<?0.05). In public healthcare users only, satisfaction was found to be an important variable that increased intention to use (p?<?0.05). Perceived risk had no relationship with continuous intention to use in either group. This study provides insight into understanding the users of telemedicine services and guidelines for developing appropriate telemedicine service models, depending whether it is public healthcare or private healthcare.