The Influence of Referral Cognition on Referral Intention Among Outpatient Patients: An Empirical Research

Abstract

Two-way referral is essentially a method of medical reform led by the government to optimize and integrate urban medical resources. The low downward referral intention can be attributed to patients’ insufficient understanding of the primary health care service and the low cognition of referral. In this paper, we conducted a questionnaire with 8 items of demographic characteristics, referral cognition and referral intention among outpatients in large hospitals, and adopted the follow-up of two years in 2014 and 2017. Based on the sample data of two years, we set up the logistics regression models for referral cognition and intention respectively to certify that there existed the influence of referral cognition on the referral intention; then constructed an incremental utility index on the basis of referral cognition increments and referral intention increments. We strive to detect the patients’ attribute type causing this influence in the demographic characteristics by using the method of empirical analysis, hence provide access for referral intention intervention for different people.