Objective  To verify the scientificity and feasibility of an index system for performance evaluation of 12320 health hotline and to examine proceeding situation and existing problems of 12320 health hotline.

  Methods  We established an assessment scale for performance of 12320 health hotline based on contents and weight of indicators in current evaluation index system. Then we conducted a survey on performance of 12320 health hotline in 9 regions (namely from region A to region Ⅰ) across China with technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) method during November to December 2014.

  Results  For the nine 12320 health hotline in different regions, the top three with better performance based on TOPSIS evaluation were in the region C, E, and F and the calculated closeness degree value (Ci) for the three were 0.5964, 0.4493, and 0.4330; while, according to the evaluation using the assessment scale established, the top three were the same as those of TOPSIS evaluation, with the overall performance scores of 97.67, 92.56, and 92.54 for the three in region C, E, and F, respectively. The performance evaluation results from the two methods were basically consistent for the 12320 health hotline in the 9 regions and the Spearman correlation coefficient for the evaluation indicators of the two methods is 0.75 (P < 0.05).

  Conclusion  The established assessment scale for evaluation of 12320 health hotline performance is of operability and applicability. The results from evaluations of the assessment scale and TOPSIS method suggest that the current performance of 12320 health hotline needs to be improved.