Number of hospitals in China 2000-2022

The total number of hospitals in China has increased significantly over the last decade from roughly 21 thousand in 2010 to almost 37 thousand hospitals in 2022. As of 2021, the region with the highest number of hospitals in China had been Shandong province with 2,654 hospitals, followed by Sichuan province with 2,481 hospitals. In the same year, Chinese hospitals provided about 7.41 million hospital beds in total and almost 14 million people had been employed in the medical sector of China.

Regional healthcare difference in China

Health care institutions in China have suffered from regional disparities in medical resources, especially between economically developed and less developed regions. In 2017, hospitals and other health institutions in Guangdong, the largest province in South Central China, had registered the highest number of hospital visits among Chinese regions, amounting to about 812 million visits, while the Autonomous Region of Tibet only registered 14 million visits.

Increasing medical costs

Expenditure for health care provision have taken up a large proportion of people’s incomes in China and increased dramatically over the last 25 years. In 1990, annual health care expenditure per capita in urban areas had amounted to a mere 26 yuan, whereas in 2017 more than 1,777 yuan had been attributed to individual medical costs.