Variables

Six facility-level measures are (1) time exposed to policy of hospital in year (TETP) ranging from 0 to 4 years, (2) location (eastern, central, and western regions of China) and hospital type, (3) quantity of facility staff, (4) quantity of health professionals, (5) quantity of bed space in terms of bed-staff ratio, and (6) total assets. These variables could profile the basic features of the facility in terms of staff, assets, and equipment. Dividing measures (4) and (5) by measure (3), we obtained 2 new variables: ratio of health professional over all staff and beds per staff, respectively, to measure relative quality of human resources and relative treatment bed space. In addition, dividing measure (6) by measure (3), and then logarithm transformed, we generated a new variable—total assets per staff—to reflect the relative capacity in medical tests or diagnosis.

Four outcome measures at the facility level are (1) OP expenses, ie, average OP expenses of care per visit; (2) IP expenses, average IP expenses of care per visit; (3) OP drug costs, average OP drug expenses per visit; and (4) IP drug costs, average IP drug expenses per visit. All four measures were adjusted by the nation’s CPI in each year against that in 2012, and logarithm transformation was performed to address their skewed distributions.