The Balanced Allocation of Medical and Health Resources in Urban Areas of China from the Perspective of Sustainable Development: A Case Study of Nanjing

Abstract

The balanced allocation of medical and health resources is an important basis for the sustainable development of health undertakings. In recent years, China has made remarkable achievements in the medical and health services, but there is still a phenomenon of unbalanced allocation of medical and health resources among different regions, which has become an urgent problem to be solved in deepening the reform of the medical and health system during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. From the perspective of people’s needs for health, this study analyzed the equity and efficiency of urban medical and health resources allocation in China by using the Theil index method and DEA method. Meanwhile, the authors used the coupling coordination degree model to construct a balanced development model with equity and efficiency as subsystems, taking the city of Nanjing as an example to analyze its balanced allocation of medical and health resources from 2008 to 2019. In general, taking Nanjing as an example, it shows that the balanced allocation of medical and health resources in Chinese cities is good, but in geographical dimension, the level of balanced allocation is low, and there are still significant differences in the equity and efficiency of allocation among regions. In the future, the government can strengthen the rationality of regional planning, appropriately increasing health investment and medical supply, considering both equity and efficiency to further realize the balanced allocation of medical and health resources and improve the sustainability of urban medical service system. The main contribution of this paper lies in that, from the perspective of sustainable development, the evaluation system is integrated to measure the equity and efficiency respectively, and the balanced development model is used to investigate the allocation of urban medical and health resources. The research results can provide reference for optimizing resources allocation and promoting the sustainable development of medical and health undertakings.