Abstract: By making use of the data from 31 provinces in mainland China from 2012 to 2016, this paper conducts an evaluation of the performance of public hospitals and makes a diagnosis of the performance barrier factors through measuring the performance barrier degrees. The results show that the evaluation index system constructed by R clustering-variation coefficient method is more scientific and feasible. The overall performance level of public hospitals in each province is not high, and it is largely affected by such factors as the medical insurance coverage, diagnosis and treatment capacity, cost burden and drug proportion, etc.. Therefore, it is recommended to improve the overall performance of public hospitals from the following five aspects: firstly, to strengthen the construction of performance management information technology, and establish a dynamic performance evaluation index system; secondly, to strengthen the incentive mechanism construction of public hospitals, and improve the overall performance level of public hospitals; thirdly, to return to the public welfare and accessibility of public hospitals, and enhance the social benefits of public hospitals; fourthly, to optimize the resource allocation and enhance the sustainability of public hospitals; fifthly, to improve the medical quality and optimize the provision of medical services in public hospitals.

Key words: public hospital; medical quality; performance evaluation; obstacle degree; R cluster analysis