ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Health Economics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1665487
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Healthcare Access in Low- and Middle Income Countries: Achievements, Synergies, Opportunities and ChallengesView all articles
Spatio-temporal Evolution of Financial Sustainability in Chinese Public Hospitals: Evidence from Provincial Panel Data (2010-2022)
Provisionally accepted
- Wuhan Hospital Of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, 430014, Hubei, China, Wuhan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: To analyze the spatio-temporal evolution patterns of financial sustainability in Chinese public hospitals and identify key driving mechanisms. Methods: Using balanced panel data from 31 Chinese provinces (2010-2022), we constructed a theory-grounded multidimensional financial sustainability evaluation framework and employed spatial econometric models and convergence testing. Results: Financial sustainability exhibited "fluctuating rise with intensifying regional differentiation" characteristics, evolving through three phases: steady improvement (2010-2015), rapid growth (2016-2019), and stable development (2020-2022). Spatially, a significant "high east-low west, strong south-weak north" pattern emerged, with global Moran's I of 0.347 indicating strong spatial autocorrelation. Club convergence analysis identified three groups with annual convergence speed of 1.8%. Government fiscal investment demonstrated a total effect of 0.401, including significant spatial spillover effects (0.089). Conclusions: Policy transmission occurs through policy learning, talent mobility, and technological diffusion mechanisms. The findings validate spatial spillover and policy diffusion theories while providing scientific evidence for establishing adaptive financial guarantee mechanisms and offering valuable reference for healthcare financing in developing countries.
Keywords: financial sustainability, Public hospitals, Spatio-Temporal Analysis, spatialeconometrics, Healthcare reform, Regional disparities
Received: 22 Jul 2025; Accepted: 29 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Deng. 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: Youyang Deng, Wuhan Hospital Of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, 430014, Hubei, China, Wuhan, 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.