Objective  To evaluate the health emergency response capability in medical institutions in Tianjin municipality and to analyze internal relationships among dimensions of the response capability for promoting health emergency response capability in Tianjin.

  Methods  From October 2015 to February 2016, we conducted a questionnaire survey among 89 relevant staff of 89 medical institutions at a secondary level or above in Tianjin city and adopted factor analysis to construct an assessment model.

  Results  The mean scores of the 11 indicators of health emergency response capability of the institutions surveyed were 0.73 ± 0.81 for 120 pre-hospital emergency care, 4.64 ± 4.48 for fever clinics, 4.74 ± 4.26 for gastroenterology clinics, 0.35 ± 0.48 for infectious disease treatment, 2.04 ± 1.20 for blood management, 3.11 ± 1.90 for laboratory detection, 3.17 ± 1.79 for logistics support and material reserve, 10.70 ± 1.72 for nosocomial infection control, 1.52 ± 0.53 for disease surveillance and reporting, 7.48 ± 3.44 for training on health emergency management, and 1.22 ± 1.19 for communication with the public and mass media, respectively. Totally three dimension factors were revealed with factor analysis: basic preparedness (covering 5 indicators), clinical treatment (3 indicators), and emergency awareness ( 3 indicators) and the three dimension factors could explain 61.91% of the total variance. The established model for the score of overall health emergency response capability was expressed as C = basic preparedness score × 0.668 + clinical treatment score × 0.172 + emergency awareness score × 0.159. Of all the medical institutions surveyed, 22 (24.72%), 45 (50.56%), and 22 (24.72%) were categorized as the institutions with high, moderate, and low health emergency response capability, respectively.

  Conclusion  Basic preparedness factor plays an important role in construction of health emergency response capability for medical institutions in Tianjin city and about a half of the institutions possess a moderate capability to cope with health emergencies.