IntroductionThe Chinese government has encouraged the development of private sector in delivering healthcare, including primary healthcare (PHC) in the new round of national health reform since 2009. However, the debate about the role of the private sector in achieving universal health coverage continues with poor support from theories and empirical evidence. This study intends to compare the quality of PHC services between the private and public providers in seven provinces in China, using unannounced standardised patients (USPs).MethodsWe are developing and validating 13 USP cases most commonly observed in the PHC setting. Six domains of quality will be assessed by the USP: effectiveness, safety, patient centredness, efficiency, timeliness and equity. The USP will make 2200 visits to 705 public and 521 private PHC institutions across seven provinces, following a multistage clustered sample design. Using each USP-provider encounter as the analytical unit, we will first descriptively compare the raw differences in quality between the private and public providers and then analyse the association of ownership types and quality, using propensity score weighting.Ethics and disseminationThe study was primarily funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#71974211, #71874116 and # 72074163) and was also supported by the China Medical Board (#16-260, #18-300 and #18-301), and have received ethical approval from Sun Yat-sen University (#2019-024). The validated USP tool and the data collected in this study will be freely available for the public after the primary analysis of the study.Trial registration numberChinese Clinical Trial Registry: #ChiCTR2000032773.

To assess and compare the QoL of the older people dwelling in traditional family versus nursing home/institution. A comprehensive literature search was performed on 10 January 2018 to identify studies that investigated the QoL of older adults dwelling in family versus nursing home settings. Analyses were run using random-effects meta-analyses. A total of six cross-sectional studies with 1623 people were included. The quality of included studies was moderate. Meta-analysis showed that compared with nursing home support, the family support could significantly improve the physical health (6 studies, SMD = 0.50, 95%CI: 0.32-0.68, p < 0.05), mental status (6 studies, SMD = 0.45, 95%CI: 0.26-0.65, p < 0.05), and social relationship (5 studies, SMD = 0.51, 95%CI: 0.19-0.83, p < 0.05). Traditional family support model demonstrated a significant improvement in the physical health, psychological status and social relationships among older adults. The conclusions were driven by cross-sectional studies, Larger, adequately powered RCTs are required to confirm our finding.