[A comprehensive evaluation of the health services in Hunan Province].
OBJECTIVE
To establish a comprehensive evaluation system for the development of health services, and to assess the levels of health services in 2008 and 2009 in Hunan compared with seven other provinces in central China, so as to provide a basis for hygiene management decisions.


METHODS
In order to establish a comprehensive evaluation system, a Delphi method, a boundary value method, and an RSR method were applied, respectively, to survey indices of health service development, to screen indices, and to determine index weights. A weighted TOPSIS method was used to evaluate the development status of health services of the eight provinces.


RESULTS
The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.884, indicating a proper surface validity and a content validity. The expert positive coefficient, authority coefficient and Kendall coefficient were 93.75%, 0.8117, and 0.31, respectively. A comprehensive evaluation system, which consisted of 3 primary indices, 10 secondary indices and 52 tertiary indices, was established. The result of the comprehensive evaluation showed that the health services development of Hunan Province ranked 7th and 6th among the 8 central provinces for 2008 and 2009, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
The established, comprehensive evaluation system has a high reliability. Health services development of Hunan Province is relatively backward among the 8 central provinces.
Department of Social Medicine and Health Management, Central South University, Changsha, China.
Gong
G
Guo
Qiong
Q
He
Zhenqiu
Z
Sun
Yi
Y
Bai
Linyong
L
Xu
Min
M
Hu
Yazhou
Y
Xiao
Xiaohua
X
Zhao
Fang
F
Zeng
Youzhe
Y
Zeng
D002681:China; D006296:Health Services / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires