During the promotion of category-based management for community healthcare institutions (class 1 institutions obtain the financial security, and class 2 institutions implement a performance management system), how to appropriately determine the security level and scientifically evaluate the performance is a difficulty to tackle for health administrative departments.

To assess the operational efficiency of community healthcare institutions with the data envelopment analysis (DEA) using the information of costs of these institutions calculated using the equivalent method, then attempt to develop an input and management model of integrating cost accounting and performance management for these institutions, providing a theoretical basis for accurate and scientific input of various resources into the community through cost measurement with equivalent method, and a data basis for performance assessment in communities with different characteristics through efficiency evaluation.

The real data (financial status and staffing) of 14 community healthcare institutions during 2019 to 2020 were collected from their financial reports, hospital information system, maternal and child healthcare information system, chronic disease management information system, as well as focus group interviews. The equivalent method was used to calculate the total costs of medical services and public health services. The super-efficiency DEA was used to evaluate and analyze the operational efficiency of the 14 sample institutions.

(1) The average cost of one equivalent service (a general medical outpatient service lasting for 15 minutes was defined as one standard service equivalent unit) was 67.64 yuan in 2019 and 69.80 yuan in 2020 for the 14 institutions. The average cost of one equivalent essential medical service was higher than that of one equivalent public health service in both 2019 (167.14 yuan vs 18.86 yuan) and 2020 (215.43 yuan vs 19.78 yuan). The institutions demonstrated significant differences in the average cost of one equivalent essential medical service and the average cost of one equivalent public health service. (2) Each institution had its own peculiar characteristics. For example, S1 institution mainly provided essential medical services, and had higher total equivalent essential medical services and efficiency than other institutions, while S9 institution focused on providing public health services, and had the highest efficiency in delivering public health services. (3) In 2020, the 14 institutions provided 134 800 equivalent COVID-19-related services, with a cost of 1.037 8 million yuan. (4) In 2019 and 2020, only two institutions were relatively overall efficient, and ≥50.0% institutions were pure technically efficient. The institutions with overall operational inefficiency were mainly caused by scale inefficiency primarily due to increasing returns to scale.

The equivalent method provides a relatively unified "scale" to standardize the service efficiency of different types of community healthcare institutions, provides support for health administrative departments implementing category-based compensation for the institutions, benefiting the featured and high-level development of community healthcare institutions. Either institutions delivering essential medical services or those delivering public health services, mainly present increasing returns to scale, suggesting that the efficiency of these institutions can be improved by increasing the human/financial/material input into the institutions and providing precise compensation for them.