existing research deems health service capacity as the
maximum degree of non-material service that can
provide actual medical output, with patients and
special groups as the main service objects, and
medical technologies, equipment, diagnosis and
treatment environment, and information technology
as basic service means. It mainly includes hospital
resource allocation, technical personnel, work
efficiency, diagnosis and treatment, technical level,
and other abilities (Wang, 2021). Scholars both in
China and abroad have conducted studies on health
service capacity. Foreign countries pay more
attention to the evaluation of emergency health
service provision (Alzahrani, 2021), while most
domestic studies are conducted from the perspective
of resource allocation and analyze the equalization of
health services at provincial, municipal, and primary
levels.
Overall, the existing research still has the
following shortcomings. First of all, theoretical
research is difficult to adapt to the current
development trend. The impact of the pandemic has
exposed the vulnerability of health service capacity,
so we should pay more attention to the formation of
a strong health service capacity network rather than
the equal allocation of medical resources. Second, the
existing research still leans toward the "hard"
indicator of facilities and pays little attention to the
"soft" indicator of resources. Moreover, the indicator
composition mostly chooses individual perception,
leaving objectivity doubtful. Finally, the elements of
health service capacity are interrelated as a network,
but no research regards them as a whole, ignoring the
coordination among the elements. The important role
of medical institutions in shaping and improving their
service capacity is also ignored.
Given the above analysis, this study constructs an
all-around indicator system for the evaluation of
health service capacity in 31 provinces
(municipalities) in China and further analyzes the
coupling coordination degree among these indicators
and the advantageous and disadvantageous indicators
of different regions. On this basis, this paper puts
forward the optimization path for health service
capacity, which provides a theoretical reference for
promoting the in-depth and diversified development
of health services.
2 CONSTRUCTION AND
CALCULATION OF
EVALUATION INDICATOR OF
HEALTH SERVICE CAPACITY
2.1 Construction of Evaluation
Indicator System
Accurately grasping the connotation of high-quality
development of health services capacity is the basis
of constructing a scientific evaluation indicator
system. It is considered that promoting the high-
quality development of health service capacity is a
major strategic choice for China to shore up weak
spots in consumer service industries and improve
people's quality of life in the face of the bottleneck of
regional resource allocation and complex and
changeable emergencies. The high-quality
development represents the optimized state of the
service capacity structure, which is closely related to
service facilities, service quality, human resources,
and supportive policies. Health service capacity is
affected by multiple internal and external indicators.
The service capacity of medical institutions in
different provinces is not only influenced by external
indicators such as regional economic development
and management policies; it is also affected by
internal indicators such as service facilities, service
efficiency, and human resources; moreover, the
development of the regional information technology
can also serve as a catalyst (Whitley, 2020).
According to the nature of indicators, they can be
divided into "hard indicators" and "soft indicators."
The former is relatively stable, including the number
of visits and the number of facilities; the latter is a
supplement to hard indicators and has certain
variability (Ni, 2010), including human resources,
information technology, etc. The interaction of "hard
indicators" and "soft indicators" destabilizes the
development of health service capacity, the latter of
which causes a huge disparity among different
provinces (municipalities). Therefore, this paper,
from the perspective of systemic analysis, established
an evaluation indicator system for evaluating the
coordinated development of "hard indicators" and
"soft indicators."
By combing the existing research results, five
evaluation dimensions were determined, including
the quality, efficiency, scope, and human resources of
hardware facilities and business operations. Given
the scarce recent research results in this aspect, this
paper further tested the rationality of the evaluation
indicator using the expert interview method to avoid