Multi-ownership of community health services and the transferred govrenment leadership in China / 中国卫生政策研究

ABSTRACT

Objective:About half of Community Health Services ( CHS) in China are not government-owned, forming a multi-ownership situation of CHS .This study aims to examine the effect of “multi-ownership policy” on the development of CHS and put forward suggestions for improving the governance of CHS .Methods:We applied maxi-mum variation sampling to select health workers of different CHS specialties and administrators from local health bu -reaus in District T of Shaanxi province and District X of Shandong province .Inductive thematic analysis was utilized to interpret the development and ramification of multi-ownership policy , and then to formulate substantive theory .Re-sults:The adoption of multi-ownership in two districts was an adaptive strategy based on the limited public finance , institutional restriction of government , and diversity of health resources .This policy promoted the establishment of CHS network , and meanwhile the government's leadership of CHS development was transferred to multiple owners of CHS, which caused the lack of CHS autonomy , fragmented regulation power and deviated development of CHS .Con-clusions:The key problem of multi-ownership situation in CHS development is the problematic partition of governance power.In order to redeem the leadership of CHS development to the local government , it is necessary to strengthen service regulation while to decentralize the facility management power to CHS , to adjust service price ,and to deepen medical insurance coverage of CHS to enhance autonomy of CHS .