ArticleEvidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM2020
Is Traditional Chinese Medicine "Mainstream" in China? Trends in Traditional Chinese Medicine Health Resources and Their Utilization in Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospitals from 2004 to 2016.
Article in Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Risk of bias among Chinese-language randomized controlled trials on Chinese herbal medicine included in meta-analyses published in 2021-2022: A cross-sectional study.Integrative medicine research · 2026Article
- Traditional Chinese medicine reimbursement reform in China: implementation progress, policy constraints, and optimization strategies.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Health Service Early-Stage Digital Adaptation of Traditional Chinese Medicine Internet Hospitals: Qualitative Exploratory Study.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- Regional disparities, dynamic evolution, and spatial spillover effects of medical resource allocation efficiency in TCM hospitals.Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E · 2025Article
- Understanding factors influencing the adoption of moxibustion techniques by the population: an extended study based on the UTAUT model.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Resource allocation efficiency in 68 county-level traditional Chinese medicine hospitals in China: a data envelopment analysis.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Effect of pediatric Tuina on children's recurrent acute respiratory tract infections: a retrospective cohort study in Southern China.Journal of traditional Chinese medicine = Chung i tsa chih ying wen pan · 2024Article
- Progress and challenges in integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine in China from 2002 to 2021.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2024Article
- Equity and prediction of health resource allocation of traditional Chinese medicine in China.PloS one · 2023Article
- TCM Prescription Generation via Knowledge Source Guidance Network Combined with Herbal Candidate Mechanism.Computational and mathematical methods in medicine · 2023Article
- Research on the equity of health resource allocation in TCM hospitals in China based on the Gini coefficient and agglomeration degree: 2009-2018.International journal for equity in health · 2022Article
- Operational definition of complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine derived from a systematic search.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2022Article
- Perspectives of traditional Chinese medicine to patch up immune checkpoint blockers.Exploration of targeted anti-tumor therapy · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTraditional, complementary, and alternative medicine (TCAM) has attracted increasing attention in developed countries, but its mainstream status in China, the home of TCAM, is unclear. Over the period of 2004-2016, we analyze the health resources and health resource utilization of traditional medicine in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospitals in China.
methodsOver 2004-2016, we obtained data from all TCM hospitals in all Chinese provinces to create a hospital-based, longitudinal dataset. TCM health resources and their utilization were measured by two outcome variables: (1) primary outcome variables comprising the proportion of TCM physicians, TCM pharmacists, revenue from TCM drugs, and TCM prescriptions and (2) the secondary outcome variables, as proxies of westernization for TCM hospitals, comprising the number of medical equipment above RMB 10,000 and the proportion of surgery in inpatient visits. We used linear regression models with hospital-fixed effects to analyze time trends for the outcome variables.
resultsThe number of public TCM hospitals remained stable from 2004 to 2016, while the number of private TCM hospitals increased from 294 in 2004 to 1560 in 2016. There was a small percentage increase in the proportion of TCM physicians (0.280%), TCM pharmacists (0.298%), and revenue from Chinese medicines (0.331%) and TCM prescriptions (1.613%) per hospital per year. Chinese drugs accounted for less than a half of the total drug prescriptions, and accordingly, just one-third of the drug revenue was from Chinese medicines at TCM hospitals. The proportions of physicians, pharmacists, revenue from Chinese drug sales, and traditional medicine prescriptions never reach the 60% benchmark target for mainstream in TCM hospitals. As proxies for Western medicine practices in TCM hospitals, the number of medical equipment above RMB 10,000 rapidly rose by over 13 percent per hospital per year, but the proportion of inpatient surgeries declined by 0.830 percentage points per hospital per year, reflecting a mixed trend in the use of Western medicine practices.
conclusionFor the 2004-2016 period, traditional medicine, although making progress towards the mainstream benchmark of 60% TCM services, was still not mainstream at TCM hospitals.
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Registered trials
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