Summary
Background
As an important means through which to promote Chinese health care reform, the family doctor policy has attracted attention from various fields. This study aimed to explore the factors influencing residents' decision to sign with family doctors, with a view to informing the changes necessary to encourage additional residents to do so, thereby enhancing the efficacy of primary health care system reform.
Methods
The residents of five communities in Xianning, Hubei Province, were selected, by convenience sampling, to participate in the study. We developed and administered a questionnaire to collect data, from which we obtained 725 valid response sets. Socio‐demographic characteristics were summarized using descriptive statistics; and Pearson chi‐squared test and binary logistic regression were performed to identify the factors influencing residents' decision to sign with family doctors.
Results
We found that the factors influencing residents' decision to sign include their education level, medical insurance, chronic diseases, medical treatment habits, awareness of the family doctor policy, perception of the medical skills of family doctors, and attitudes towards family doctors' signing services (P < .05).
Conclusion
To encourage more residents to sign with family doctors, we recommend the implementation of the following: increasing publicity for the family doctor policy, promoting the reasonable distribution of high‐quality resources, augmenting the standard of general medical education, and improving the skills and competencies of family doctors.