Identify doctors’ online performance and prioritize service attributes: A framework with aspect-based sentiment analysis and empirical investigation

Objective This study aims to prioritize service attributes related to doctors’ online performance based on patients’ reviews on online healthcare platforms (OHPs). Method We propose a three-stage framework based on uncertainty reduction theory. First, perceived service attributes are extracted from review texts through aspect-based sentiment analysis using deep learning models. Second, the impact of these attributes on customer satisfaction and subsequent consultation demand is prioritized using extreme gradient boosting and an econometric model, respectively. Third, the service strengths and weaknesses of individual doctors are evaluated, to provide recommendations for targeted improvements through importance-performance analysis. Results A dataset of 445,435 reviews involving 49,024 doctors from an OHP were analyzed based on our framework. We find that attributes reducing cognitive uncertainty such as attitude are more influential than those addressing behavioral uncertainty like professional skill or fit uncertainty like overall experience. Conclusion We built a three-stage framework for mining the perceived service attributes and ranked their priority, which is conducive to doctors’ use of patient feedback on OHPs to adjust their service focus and develop strategies to improve service quality.