Analysis of business operations of county-level public hospitals in Beijing

Objective To propose on reform and development policies of county-level public hospitals in Beijing by means of investigation and analysis of their business operations to identify existing problems. Methods Quantitative, descriptive analysis and in-depth interviews were used to study business operation data from 2012 to 2014 of the 30 county-level public hospitals in Beijing, in order to learn their development trends. Results Business operations of such hospitals were found to be desirable in general.The average growth rate per annum of the revenue of county-level hospitals, traditional Chinese medicine hospitals and women-children health hospitals was 15.7%, 18.7%, and 11.0% respectively; such growth rate of their expenditure was 16.4%, 21.1%, and 15.1% respectively.Roadblocks were also found, however, namely low income of medical personnels, operations in debt, lack of subsidy channels, and the marked gap of development among such hospitals. Conclusions In view of the above-mentioned problems, the authors put forward policy suggestions as follows: to optimize the government subsidy mechanism, to improve financial supervision and internal audit of such hospitals, to reasonably raise income of the medical personnels, and to build a mutually complementary system of medical service system that is mutually complementary between urban and rural areas in terms of their functionality. Key words: Beijing; County-level public hospital; Business operations; Subsidy mechanism