To establish an evaluation index for the public health emergency response capabilities of public hospitals.

A draft of the index system was developed based on the 4R theory of crisis management, literature reviews and qualitative interviews. Delphi method was employed to conduct 2 rounds of consultations among 24 experts to revise the draft. Analytical hierarchy process was used to measure the weight of each index.

The expert positive coefficient of the two rounds of expert consultation was 100.00%, and the expert coordination coefficient and variation coefficient were good; after two rounds of Delphi expert consultation, the evaluation indexes for public emergency response capabilities of public hospitals were established, including: 4 first-level indexes, 12 second-level indexes and 48 third-level indexes. In the reliability test of evaluation indexes, overall Cronbach's α coefficient was 0.96; in the validity test, there was a close relationship between the four first-level indexes, with the correlation coefficient ranging from 0.61 to 0.86.

The evaluation index constructed the emergency capabilities of public hospitals may include the whole process of public health emergency, which can be used as a reference for public hospitals to improve health emergency response capacity building.