Preliminary development of a reference conceptual framework about social responsibility of public hospitals in China

Abstract

Public hospitals play an integral part in the health, welfare, and success of the communities they serve. In their roles, public hospitals are expected to embrace the principles of social responsibilities, but these ideas are often vaguely or poorly defined or implemented in the healthcare setting. This paper uses China as a case study to develop a theoretical framework of social responsibilities for public hospitals that can be applied to evaluate hospital performance on social responsibility and to enhance health management educational programs. A systematic literature review and Delphi panel of Chinese domestic scholars were used to examine potential indicators to measure social responsibilities of public hospitals. A four-level of corporate social responsibilities (CSR) framework was combined with four performance parameters for medical institutions (accessibility, appropriateness, quality, and efficiency) to create a matrix structure of social responsibilities with empirically studied indicators.