Public hospitals in China: how the national statistics define them and how the State Council describes their governance

In China's national health statistics, a public hospital is a hospital whose economic type is state-owned or collectively owned. In the National Health Commission's statistical bulletin, 11754 hospitals are counted as public. This page sets out that definition and the national counts, and summarises the State Council's opinions on hospital management. It names no hospital, and it does not rate, rank or recommend any institution.

How the statistics define public and private hospitals

The bulletin's notes define a public hospital as a hospital whose economic type is state-owned or collectively owned. They define a private hospital (民营医院) as any hospital other than a public one, including joint-venture, shareholding cooperative, private, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan invested and foreign-invested hospitals.

What the bulletin counts

The bulletin's table of hospitals by ownership gives these figures for 2024:

Hospital group	Institutions	Beds
All hospitals	38710	8119877
Public hospitals	11754	5605828
Private hospitals	26956	2514049

The bulletin gives these shares and volumes:

Public hospitals hold 69.0 percent of hospital beds, and private hospitals hold 31.0 percent.
Public hospitals had 37.7亿 diagnosis and treatment visits (诊疗人次), which is 83.7 percent of all hospital visits.
Public hospitals had 20959.6万 admissions (入院人次), which is 82.3 percent of all hospital admissions.
The bed occupancy rate was 78.8 percent for hospitals nationwide and 84.8 percent for public hospitals.
The average stay of discharged patients was 8.6 days in hospitals nationwide and 8.0 days in public hospitals.

In these figures, 亿 and 万 are the Chinese units for one hundred million and ten thousand.

The bulletin also splits hospitals by level. Our guide to hospital grades in China explains what level and grade mean.

How the State Council describes hospital governance

Several passages of the General Office of the State Council's guiding opinions on establishing a modern hospital management system concern public hospitals.

On principles, the opinions say public hospitals must stay public-interest institutions. They say the Party committee and the government carry leadership, guarantee, management and supervision responsibilities for public hospitals, and that social benefit comes first. They also call for separating government functions from hospital management, and for separating ownership from operation. The government's role as the funder is described as setting up and supervising the hospital, while the hospital keeps its own authority over operation as a public institution.

On the hospital charter, the opinions say hospitals of every level and kind should draw up one. A charter should cover the hospital's nature, purpose, function, management system, funding sources, organisation, decision-making and supervision, among other matters. For public hospital charters, the opinions say the position and role of the Party organisation in the internal governance structure must be made clear.

On decision-making, the hospital director is in overall charge of medical care, teaching, research and administration. The director's office meeting is the administrative and professional decision-making body of a public hospital.

On quality and safety, the director is the first person responsible for lawful practice and for medical quality and safety. The opinions name core systems that are to be strictly applied, including first-visit responsibility, three-level ward rounds, graded nursing, graded management of surgery, graded management of antimicrobial drugs and safe use of blood.

On pay and assessment, medical staff pay must not be linked to income from drugs, health materials, tests or laboratory work. Revenue targets must not be set for medical staff. Assessments are to cover areas such as the direction of the hospital, social benefit, medical services, economic management and training, with indicators such as workload, service quality, medical quality and safety, cost control and patient satisfaction.

What this page did not establish

Provincial and city figures were not collected here.
Later changes to the State Council opinions were not checked.
No hospital was named, and no hospital's ownership, level or licence was checked.
How an individual hospital is owned and run depends on facts about that hospital that these sources do not give.

Questions people ask

What counts as a public hospital in China's national statistics?

The statistical bulletin counts as public the hospitals whose economic type is state-owned or collectively owned. All other hospitals are counted as private.

Are private hospitals counted separately?

Yes. The bulletin counts private hospitals as a separate group and lists the kinds of hospital included in it.

Does the bulletin rank public hospitals?

The bulletin counts institutions, beds, visits and admissions. It does not rank hospitals, and this page does not either.

Sources

Each source above was read on the date shown. This page is an unofficial summary of general administrative information. It is not published by the bodies named above, and it is not medical advice. If it differs from the official pages, the official pages prevail, and rules and figures may change after the check date.