A study on the equity of health resources and equalization development in Yunnan Province from 2009 to 2013

Appropriate heath resource allocation is the primary condition for protecting all society members to obtain effective and equity health service, and meanwhile, it is the main approach to reduce the health discrepancies among residents in Yunnan Province. This paper collects the medical resource data of 16 cities and prefectures in Yunnan from 2009–2013. This paper measures the discrepancies of medical service among different areas by using Theil Index Analysis, and finds that the total difference of basic health service among east, middle, west and south areas decrease gradually. However, the equity of health institutions and hospital beds is significantly better than health workers. Through Theil Index composition analysis, we find that in aspects of health institutes and health workers, the key element for the inequality of health institutions is the imbalance within middle area, however, for the hospital beds inequity, the main factor is the inequality between areas. Therefore, to facilitate the equity of medical resources, it is necessary to have clear development strategy, optimize the structure of health input, set reasonable layout of health institutions, strengthen the health infrastructure, and improve the quality of health workers.