State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China.
School of Management, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China.
PLoS One. 2022 Apr 22;17(4):e0267490. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267490. eCollection 2022.
Rural traditional Chinese medicine hospitals bear responsibilities of providing efficient medical services for rural residents. Efficiency assessments have previously been conducted in single province. This study aimed to investigate the technical efficiency of rural traditional Chinese medicine hospitals across China from 2013 to 2018, with the application of super slack-based measure data envelopment analysis. In total, 1219 hospitals covering 28 provinces were included as sample hospitals. Overall, hospitals performed technically less efficiently but presented with an increasing trend. Redundancy and insufficiency existed in health input and output variables, respectively. Notably, optimizing input variables was found to make more substantial improvement in hospital efficiency. Provincial and regional disparities were also observed in hospital efficiency. In conclusion, rural traditional Chinese medicine hospitals have experienced slight improvement in efficiency during the study period, however, their efficiency was still in a relatively low level with ample room for improvement. Meanwhile, regional coordinated development should also be noticed in this process.
农村中医院承担着为农村居民提供高效医疗服务的责任。之前已经在单个省份进行了效率评估。本研究旨在应用超松弛基测度数据包络分析方法,调查 2013 年至 2018 年期间中国农村中医院的技术效率。共纳入了 28 个省份的 1219 家医院作为样本医院。总体而言,医院的技术效率较低,但呈现出上升趋势。卫生投入和产出变量都存在冗余和不足。值得注意的是,优化投入变量可以显著提高医院效率。医院效率也存在省际和地区差异。总之,在研究期间,农村中医院的效率略有提高,但效率仍处于较低水平,有很大的改进空间。同时,在此过程中也应注意区域协调发展。