Impact of Diagnosis-Intervention Packet (DIP) reforms on inpatient services for low-income populations in central China: A multi-stage interrupted time-series analysis.

ABSTRACT: As global healthcare costs continue to rise, concerns about health equity have become increasingly prominent. In response, China introduced the Diagnosis-Intervention Packet (DIP) reform in 2021 to optimize healthcare resource allocation and control costs. While the reform has been widely discussed in terms of its overall cost-control effects, its heterogeneous impact on low-income populations, especially across different hospital tiers, remains unclear. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the differentiated impact of the DIP reform on low-income patients' inpatient service utilization. Using multi-stage interrupted time series (ITS) analysis, we analyzed 1.17 million hospitalization records from low-income patients in City S, a pilot city in central China. The study reveals that

SUBMITTER: Shen K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12143900 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature