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Chinese Journal of Management Science ›› 2026, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (6): 239-249.doi: 10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2024.0595

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Optimum of Pricing and Reimbursement Policy for Mixed Online and Offline Medical Service Considering Heterogeneous Patients

Xiaoyan Zhu1,2, Jing Cui1,3, Ting Zhang4, Yunzhi Cao5()   

  1. 1.School of Economics and Management,University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100190,China
    2.MOE Social Science Laboratory of Digital Economic Forecasts and Policy Simulation at UCAS,Beijing 100190,China
    3.Department of Business Management,Chengde College of Applied Technology,Chengde 067000,China
    4.School of Management Science and Engineering,Southwestern University of Finance and Economics,Chengdu 611130,China
    5.Business School,Central South University,Changsha 410083,China
  • Received:2024-04-17 Revised:2024-10-28 Online:2026-06-25 Published:2026-05-22
  • Contact: Yunzhi Cao E-mail:caoyunzhi19@mails.ucas.ac.cn

Abstract:

As a novel medical service, telemedicine contributes to alleviating the difficulty of seeing a doctor for the patients and the unbalanced distribution of medical resources in the traditional offline medical system in China. For a medical service system composed of the government, a hospital, and patients, the geographically heterogeneous patients are considered that face to visit the clinic periodically with chronic disease. A three-stage sequential game model is constructed and the equilibrium solution of the government’s medical reimbursement ratio and hospital’s medical service price for the mixed online and offline medical service is deduced. Benchmarking the traditional single offline medical service, through theoretical analysis and numerical experiments, the impact of clinical feasibility, fixed online setting fees, etc., on patients’ choice of medical treatment, hospital profits, social welfare, etc., after the adoption of telemedicine is compared and analyzed. It shows that the government’s medical reimbursement ratio is positively correlated with the hospital’s medical service price, and the adoption of telemedicine does not change the relationship between offline medical price and reimbursement ratio. The mixed online and offline medical service is a potential and efficient approach to improve social welfare and realize that all patients visit the clinic. Improving the method and technology of telemedicine by artificial intelligence, reducing the membership fee of telemedicine, decreasing the setting fees of patients’ hardware and software equipment, and developing the traffic system to control the traffic cost are all conducive to the implementation of telemedicine.

Key words: telemedicine service, heterogeneous patients, medical service pricing, reimbursement policy, social welfare

CLC Number: