Objective  To examine the preference for health service utilization among community chronic disease patients with various presumed severity and to provide references for developing strategies appropriate to requirements of the patients.

  Methods  We conducted a face-to-face survey among 655 randomly selected community adult residents (≥ 18 years) covered by 6 community health service centers in Wuhan city of Hubei province and 6 in Zhuhai city of Guangdong province between July and August 2017 with a self-designed questionnaire based on discrete choice experiment method.

  Results  Significant negative preference for private medical institution, preference for integrated Chinese and western medicine service, and preference for western medicine service were reported by the participants regardless of the presumed severity of chronic diseases (all P < 0.01); the participants also reported significant preference for paying lower monthly out-of-pocket medical expenses (P < 0.01). The participants reported the preference for community general medical service under the assumption of having a mild chronic disease condition (β = 0.263, P < 0.01) but for medical service provided by specialized hospitals under the assumption of having a severe chronic disease condition (β = 2.342, P < 0.01).

  Conclusion  Community chronic disease patients would prefer to have medical service provide by public medical institutions, medication combining traditional Chinese and western medicine, and to pay a lower monthly out-of-pocket medical expenses regardless of the severity of their disease conditions. But the severity of disease condition, type of medical insurance, and disease related economic burden may affect the preference of community chronic disease patients.