Characteristic analysis of annual outpatient service utilization by rural residents in 6 counties in China / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the current situation and predilection of the annual outpatient services as used by rural residents in China ,and the characteristics and regional differences .Methods A stratified random sampling survey was adopted to extract 12 villages out of 6 counties across China , and the outpatients′personal clinical records were merged from all levels of local medical institutions . Descriptive statistics andχ2 test were employed to analyze their utilization .Results The survey showed that Huangzhong ,Xixian and Huzhou counties had lower access to health resources per thousand peoples than the other 3 counties ,as the outpatient visits were also lower than the latter .50％ of the outpatient services of the six counties in 2014 (217881/403707)were used by 20％ of the rural residents(23326/109058) .In most counties ,service utilization of primary institutions accounted for over 65％ (299228/371623)of the county .Conclusions The utilization of outpatient service in these counties presents aggregation effect to some extent.Irrational utilization was found in some areas and hierarchical medical system needs to be improved .