The Structural Characteristics of Economic Network and Efficiency of Health Care in China

• Main Authors: Kuang-Cheng Chai, Yang Yang, De-Cong Xie, Yang-Lu Ou, Ke-Chiun Chang, Xiao Han
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-08-01
• Series: Frontiers in Public Health
• Subjects: efficiency of health care; network structure; social network analysis; cluster analysis; medical resources
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.724736/full

With the rapid development of the economy of China, the interactivity between provinces and the mobility of the population is increasing. Some patients who could have received the same treatment in their residential areas still choose to receive services in areas with higher economic development and concentrated high-quality medical resources, resulting in a huge waste of medical resources. Blindly increasing medical resources everywhere does not necessarily increase the output effectively. In this study, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, social network analysis (SNA), cluster analysis, and regression analysis are used to analyze the structural characteristics of the economic network structure and efficiency of health care in China. The results show that indegree and eigenvector centrality have a significant positive correlation with the efficiency of health care, and the clustering coefficient has a significant negative correlation with the efficiency of health care in China. This study uses a k-means algorithm to classify 31 provinces into three groups and extract their characteristics. As for the supply of health care resources, the government should command and dispatch the resources in the whole country through a top-down design based on the characteristics of each province.