Comparative analysis of performance evaluation indexes of public medical institutions in China / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

The reform of public medical institutions is a critical and difficult breakthrough in furthering the healthcare system reform in China, for which the performance appraisal of public hospitals can serve an important role. The performance policy documents of tertiary public hospitals, secondary public hospitals and primary medical and health institutions in China since 2019 were compared and analyzed, to systematically identify the similarities and differences and development rules of the three evaluation index systems. The study analyzed the impacts of the three systems on the management of medical institutions and provided reference suggestions for improving their performance evaluation. It was found that all the three systems aim at guiding tertiary public hospitals to evolve from the pattern centering on scale expansion to that on quality and benefits, guiding secondary ones to improve their capacity of medical services, and guiding primary medical institutions to focus on basic medical and public health services. However, these systems lack indexes on hierarchical diagnosis and treatment for secondary hospitals and application of examination results, while national surveillance indexes on primary ones accounted for only 23.8% of all. It is recommended to dynamically adjust both the performance evaluation index system and the surveillance methods, and to enhance the application of examination results and development of supporting policies as well.