Objective To review the literature written in English on hospital performance research and provide theoretical and practical references for research in the field of hospital performance in China. Methods Literature related to hospital performance published from 1972 to 2022 in the Web of Science Core Collection was retrieved. Microsoft Excel 2021 was used to analyze the annual publication volume of English literature in the field of hospital performance. CiteSpace 6.1.R6 software was used for co-occurrence analysis of countries/regions, institutions and authors, research hotspots and frontiers. Results A total of 1447 articles were ultimately included. The analysis of annual publication volume showed that the overall publication volume in the field of hospital performance was on the rise. The co-occurrence analysis of countries/regions indicated that the United States had the highest output of academic papers (548), followed by the United Kingdom and China (120 and 89 respectively). The most productive institution was Harvard University in the United States, and the most productive scholar was Harlan M. Krumholz from the Yale University School of Medicine in the United States. The most frequently occurring keyword was “care”. The clustering analysis of keywords revealed that the keywords in the field of hospital performance research were clustered into 12 categories. The top 5 keywords with the highest burst intensity included “acute myocardial infarction” “indicator” “US hospital” “predictor” and “administrative data”. Keywords such as “public hospital” “financial performance” “performance measurement” “framework” and “organizational performance” began to emerge in 2020 and had continued to the present. Conclusions The research hotspot in the field of hospital performance has shifted from focusing on individual performance to organizational performance. There is still a lot of room for research in this field in China, and the exploration of hospital performance evaluation and management models may continue to be research hotspots in this field in the future.