Abstract: Objective：To investigate the outpatient provider preference and its influencing factors among residents older than 45 years in China’s urban areas.  Methods:The data of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) taking place in the year 2011 were analyzed with the method of multinominal logistic regression. Results:In the last month, the rates of respondents with hypertension or/and diabetes who were reported being ill and seeking treatment were higher than that of those without such diseases. 51.73% of the hypertensive and 64.81% of the diabetic preferred hospitals to community health service (CHS) and private clinics. Regression results showed that people with Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI), higher education level, higher capacity to pay and diabetes tended to choose hospitals rather than CHS. Conclusion:Urban people with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) preferred to use hospitals rather than the CHS, which reflected CHS’s low performance in NCDs management. UEBMI failed to channel off the insured people to CHS. CHS needs to strengthen its ability to manage NCDs, and UEBMI should implement measures to attract patients’ flow to CHS.

Key words: Patient preference, Chronic disease, Community health service, Medical insurance