ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1660238
Evaluation of China's Medical and Older Adult Care Integration Policy Based on the PMC Model
Provisionally accepted
Yahui Ba1*
Zhonghua Luo2*- 1School of Health Management, Gansu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, China
- 2School of Marxism, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, China
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Objective: Many countries are experiencing above-average levels of aging, and older adults have higher demands on healthcare and older adult care systems. It is important for governments to improve policies to enhance the quality of healthcare and older adult care systems. However, research on policies combining healthcare and older adult care remains limited. This study evaluates healthcare and older adult care policies, particularly the medical and older adult care integration policy, to provide a reference for policy interventions that can achieve sustainable development. Methods: This study introduced a policy maturity and consistency (PMC) index model based on text mining technology to analyze 28 representative medical and older adult care integration policy documents. The analysis model identifies policy deficiencies and provides actionable insights for improving future policy frameworks. Results: The PMC indices of the 28 policies ranged from 7.67 to 4.40, with 22 policies rated as 'good' and 6 as 'acceptable.' The policy texts demonstrated strong standardization and scientific rigor in terms of content expression and technical structure. However, regarding specific performance, 16 policies scored above the average, while 12 scored below the average. Analysis of the PMC surface plots for the 28 policies reveals that the overall three-dimensional surface exhibits a noticeable concave feature, indicating that the implementation potential and effectiveness of nearly half of the policies still have significant room for improvement. Conclusion: Through the analysis of China's medical and older adult care integration policy texts using the PMC model, it was concluded that China's medical and older adult care integration policies have a high degree of systematicity and consistency. The following recommendations are proposed: improve the policy system to enhance policy coverage and inclusiveness; optimize the combination of policy tools to enhance policy implementation flexibility; and improve the diversified security mechanism to enhance the systematic support and precise supply capabilities of medical and older adult care integration services.
Keywords: medical and older adult care integration policy, PMC index model, Aging, Policy evaluation, text mining
Received: 05 Jul 2025; Accepted: 13 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ba and Luo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yahui Ba, School of Health Management, Gansu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, China
Zhonghua Luo, School of Marxism, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.