The Impact of Physician Collaboration on Online Medical Team Effectiveness: Evidence from a Telemedicine Platform

Physicians increasingly deliver health information and medical support through online medical teams (OMTs) in telemedicine platforms, where patients interact with multiple physicians within a single consultation episode. Yet limited research has systematically examined how physician collaboration influences team effectiveness in OMTs. This study investigates the impact of physician collaboration on team effectiveness using a panel dataset of 1,181 OMTs from 2017 to 2023 on a leading Chinese telemedicine platform. We employ a difference-in-differences design and large language models to identify the effects of physician collaboration and uncover the underlying mechanisms. Our results show that physician collaboration reduces team effectiveness. To unpack the underlying mechanisms, we further examine two potential effects: the cognitive-load effect and the free-riding effect. The empirical results reveal that the cognitive-load effect significantly decreases team effectiveness, whereas there is no empirical evidence to support the free-riding effect. Additionally, heterogeneity analyses indicate that the negative effect of collaboration is mitigated when more experienced physicians are involved. These results provide theoretical insights into team performance in telemedicine contexts and advance health communication research. The findings also offer practical guidance for platform designers to strengthen communication management in team-based telemedicine platforms.