Abstract: Objective To examine the contidition and problems of care service in non-profit elderly care institutions in urban areas of Ningbo city and to provide references for improving service quality of the agencies.Methods Convenience sampling was adopted to select 12 managers and 100 elderly persons in 5 pension agencies for a questionnaire survey.Results For the 5 institutions surveyed,the total number of bed was 3300; the average occupancy rate was 83.33%; the nursing staff accounted averagely for only 10.03% of the total staff; the ratio of the nursing staff versus the elderly stayed in the institution was 1:28.4 for the larger agencies and 1:57.1 for the smaller agencies.The pension agencies mainly provided basic daily-life care to the elderly stayed,of which,88% were the elderly aged 70-89 years and basically taking care of themselves.The results of univariate analysis revealed that the satisfaction of the elderly to the service provided was significantly influenced by the number of children and education level of the elderly(both P<0.01).The main reasons for the elderly staying in the pension agency were with the children being busy with their work,not willing to trouble their children,and being like to live in an environment convenient for communication among the elderly.Conclusion There is a deficit for the amount of nursing staff and the items and the quality of care services need to be improved for urban pension agencies in Ningbo city.