论文部分内容阅读
Township hospitals are an important link in the Chinese rural healthcare system,but their use has declined since the 1980s in the wake of successive waves of socio-economic reform.Based on longitudinal data covering 9 years (2000-2008) and 24 township hospitals randomly selected from Weifang prefecture (Shandong province, China), this article analyses the environmental and supply-side determinants of the volume of curative activity at township hospitals, as measured by number of outpatient visits and number of discharged inpatients.Hausman-Taylor and Fixed-Effect Vector Decomposition estimators are used in order to handle time-invariant variables.Cross-comparison of the results of the two estimations highlighted similar outcomes.The study finds that the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme phased in from 2003 has helped increase the activity of township hospitals, but that there are still financial barriers preventing access to expensive medical services.The analyses also underline also that the system of referrals between health facilities levels should be tightened up, and that township hospitals, which are visibly over-sized, needs to re-scaled to fit environmental factors.