Research On The Effect Of NCMS On Medical Service Utilization

New Cooperative Medical System (NCMS) is an important change in China rural health care system. It is organized, guided and supported by the government, rural residents choose to participate voluntarily. It is a medical mutual aid system for rural residents based on comprehensive arrangement for serious disease. With the implementation of NCMS in some cities and counties in China since2003, the number of participants has grown at an annual rate of34%. In2010NCMS has been basically covering all rural residents in China. However, many domestic and foreign scholars have not reached consistent conclusions on the effect of NCMS in recent years.This dissertation uses OLS, PSM and PSMDID methods to evaluate the implementation effect of NCMS, according to the data of Chinese Health and Nutrition Survey in year2006and2000. We investigate two indicators:the utilization of medical services and the residents’ medical care seeking behavior. The utilization of medical services includes hospitalization rate and outpatient rate in recent four weeks, while the residents’ medical care seeking behavior includes the proportion of sick residents without seeing doctors. There are selection bias and omitted variable problems while using OLS. And we only use the data of year2006while using PSM, without comparing the situation before the implementation of NCMS, neglecting the influence of the factors varying with time. PSMDID uses the data of year2006and2000, so it can overcome the shortcomings of the other two methods, and we can get the more accurate conclusion.The empirical research of this dissertation provides reference value for improving NCMS. Empirical analysis shows that NCMS has significant effect on increasing the rural residents’ hospitalization rate and outpatient rate in recent four weeks. However, NCMS doesn’t decrease the proportion of sick residents without seeing doctors significantly. Through further study, we find that NCMS increases the proportion of sick residents choosing to treat by themselves significantly. The reason can be attributed to the increase in the number of pharmacies in villages, making rural residents more convenient to treat themselves, and it is still not very convenient to go to the nearest hospital to seek medical care.