ObjectiveTo measure the total factor productivity and its component changes of public secondary general hospitals in China from 2012 to 2018.MethodsFrom February to September in 2019, stratified systematic sampling method was used to collect the panel data of input and output indicators from 2012 to 2018 of 511 public secondary general hospitals in 5 provinces of China (Shandong, Hubei, Hainan, Anhui, and Shanxi), and Bootstrap-Malmquist-data envelopment analysis was used to calculate the total factor productivity and its component changes of the hospitals.ResultsFrom 2012 to 2018, the total factor productivity of the 511 public secondary general hospitals decreased by 0.22%, technical efficiency decreased by 5.24%, technical changes increased by 5.29%, pure technical efficiency decreased by 1.40%, and scale efficiency decreased by 3.89%, respectively.ConclusionsIn the past 7 years, the total factor productivity of public secondary general hospitals in China has declined slightly, mainly due to the decline of scale efficiency and pure technical efficiency, and the technological progress is the main reason for its improvement. The implications for the public secondary general hospitals are three folds: avoiding blind expansion and exploring optimum scale of beds, strengthening the internal fine management to improve the management practice and technical efficiency, and promoting technological progress by healthcare cooperating organizations.
In the context of actively coping with aging, China has introduced a series of health care integration policies. Using the advocacy coalition framework theory, this paper aims to analyze the process of health care integration policy changes in China from three dimensions: policy beliefs, external events and policy learning. The policy subsystem of health care integration in China includes two coalitions: top-down cascade promotion and bottom-up absorption and radiation. External events and policy learning triggered policy change, where policy learning included endogenous learning within the coalition and exogenous learning between the coalitions. A policy impasse occurs when the two advocacy coalitions are at odds, and policy brokers and professional forums can get rid of the policy impasse. In the process of policy change in China’s health care integration, the two major advocacy coalitions have reached a certain consensus. It is recommended to alleviate the problems in the integration of health care by strengthening the external factors in the change of health care policy, enhancing the policy learning in the change of health care policy, and making full use of the information resources in the change of health care policy, so as to promote the high-quality development of the integration of health care.
Objective To analyze the advancement and trends of English literature on elderly integrated care, and provide a reference for related research and practice in China. Methods Web of Science database was searched for English literature on elderly integrated care published between 1977 and 2000, and then CiteSpace software was applied to analyze and graphically present the articles to understand the chronological development, publishing institutions, research hotspots, key articles and so on. Results A total of 1177 English research papers on elderly integrated care were included. The yearly quantity of articles increased significantly since 2016. More than 100 articles had origin in the Unite State of America, the Netherland, the United Kingdom, and Canada, respectively; the organizations of those researches were mainly single programs, and the research fields were relatively scattered. The high-frequency keywords of these articles were health care, quality of life, primary care, home care, community, chronic disease, long term care, mental health, etc, and the burst terms were long term care, case management, quality of life, community, rehabilitation, telehealth, all inclusive care, etc. According to the centrality of co-citation clustering, the top one article was World Report on Ageing and Health published by the World Health Organization. Conclusions Elderly integrated care has been paid increasing international attention. In recent years, integrated care, transitional care, case management and telecare have become research hotspots. With the key policies of people-centred and integrated health services, primary care, and community-level interventions, typical countries have developed basic models of elderly integrated care. The above theories and experiences can provide references for the practice of elderly integrated care in China.
ObjectiveTo measure the operational efficiency and explore the phenomenon of the economy of scale in secondary public general hospitals of China for improving the health service efficiency.MethodsFrom February to August 2019, the data set of two input indicators (the number of employees and actual open beds) and two output indicators (the numbers of outpatients and discharges) in 511 secondary general hospitals of Shandong, Anhui, Shanxi, Hubei and Hainan provinces in 2018 were collected for data envelopment analysis. The analysis processes were three folds: First, the technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency, scale efficiency and scale compensation status of the sample hospitals were calculated respectively. Second, the comparative analysis of efficiency value and scale compensation status was carried out in 5 groups according to the bed scale. Finally, the input and output projection analysis was carried out on the ineffective decision making units.ResultsThe medians of technical efficiencies, pure technical efficiencies, and scale efficiencies of the 511 secondary general hospitals were 0.472, 0.531, and 0.909, respectively. In the 511 hospitals, 493 hospitals (96.5%) were in ineffective state, of which 321 hospitals (62.8%) were in the state of decreasing return to scale. The staff redundancy of the group with beds >100 and ≤300 was 23.86%, and its service quantity could be increased by 39.37%.ConclusionsThe overall operating efficiencies are inefficiency in secondary general hospitals of China and the optimal scale of actual open beds is between 300 and 500 beds from the perspective of scale efficiency.
ObjectiveTo compare and evaluate the discrimination, validity, and reliability of different data envelopment analysis (DEA) models for measuring the effectiveness of models by selecting different input and output indicators of the model.MethodsData from health statistical reports and pilot program of diagnosis-related groups of tertiary hospitals in Hubei Province from 2017 to 2018 were used to analyze the discrimination, content and structure validity, and reliability of the models. Six DEA models were established by enriching the details of input and output on the basis of the input and output indicators of the conventional DEA model of hospitals.ResultsFrom the view of discrimination, the results of all models were left-skewed, the cost-efficiency model had the lowest left-skewed degree (skewness coefficient: -0.14) and was the flattest (kurtosis coefficient: -1.02). From the view of structure validity, the results of the cost-efficiency model were positively correlated with total weights, outpatient visits, and inpatient visits (r=0.328, 0.329, 0.315; P<0.05). From the perspective of content validity, the interpretation of model was more consistent with theory of production after revision of input and output indicators. From the view of reliability, the cost efficiency model had the largest correlation coefficient between the data of 2017 and 2018 (r=0.880, P<0.05).ConclusionsAfter refining the input and output indicators of the DEA model, the discrimination, validity, and reliability of the model are higher, and the results are more reasonable. Using indicators such as discrimination, validity, and reliability can measure the effectiveness of the DEA model, and then optimize the model by selecting different input and output indicators.