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Objectives: The Chinese government has greatly increased funding for disease control and prevention since the 2003 Severe Acute Respiration Syndrome crisis, but it is also concerned whether these increased resources have been used efficiently to improve public health services. We aimed to assess the efficiency of county-level Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCs) of China and to identify strategies for optimising their performance., Methods: A total of 446 county-level CDCs were selected based on systematic sampling throughout China. The data envelopment analysis framework was used to calculate the efficiency score of sampled CDCs in 2010. The Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (CCR) model was applied to calculate the overall and scale efficiency, and the Banker, Charnes and Cooper (BCC) model was used to assess technical efficiency. Models included three inputs and seven outputs. A projection analysis was conducted to identify the difference between projection value and actual value for inputs and outputs., Results: The average overall efficiency score of CDCs was 0.317, and the average technical efficiency score was 0.442 and 88.3% with decreasing returns to scale. Projection analysis indicated that all seven categories of outputs were underproduced. CDCs in the eastern region tended to perform better than CDCs in the middle and the western region., Conclusions: Most county-level CDCs in China were operated inefficiently. Emphasis should be put on increasing staff and general operating expenses through current governmental funding, upgrading healthcare providers' competencies and enhancing the standardisation of operational management, so that CDCs could utilise their resources more efficiently., (© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Physician retention has become a critical issue for maintaining the success of today's health care organizations. With many external factors—increasing malpractice premiums, lower reimbursement rates, and managed care controls—driving physicians out of the practice, it is imperative to understand how the internal functions of the organization can help maintain satisfaction in the workplace and prevent physicians from leaving (Reece, 2000; Taylor, 2002). This is especially important in Community and Migrant Health Centers (C/MHCs), federally supported health clinics providing care to low-income and uninsured patients in medically undeserved communities and neighborhoods. In this study, we examine the medical directors' roles and responsibilities, their relationships with the C/MHC administrators, and whether these impact satisfaction and, ultimately retention in the centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the nation's community and migrant health centers, where substantial numbers of female physicians are medical directors, the second highest executive position, in search of insights for managed care organizations for recruiting and retaining women medical directors. This paper provides the first comparative national profile of women and men community and migrant health center (C/MHC) medical directors in terms of their personal and work characteristics, as well as job satisfaction. The study findings indicate that, for the most part, female medical directors do not differ much from their male colleagues in issues of work characteristics or job satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]