To analyze the commonalities and differences of " Internet plus healthcare" related policies in the eastern, central and western regions of China before and after the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide references for further improving China′s " Internet plus healthcare" policy.

Collecting the policies of " Internet plus healthcare" promulgated by 31 provinces(autonomous regions, municipalities)in China from April 2018 to December 2020 on the websites of various government departments, extracting keywords based on content analysis methods, and calculating degree centralities using UCINET 6 software. A comparison of the policies of the eastern, central and western regions between the pre epidemic stage(April 2018 to December 2019)and the COVID-19 pandemic stage(January 2020 to December 2020)was carried out.

In the pre epidemic stage, Internet diagnosis and treatment, " Internet plus medical service price" and quality supervision were the focus of attention in all regions. But the eastern region paid more attention to the policy planning of Internet hospital operation and Internet medical application, the central region focused on the transformation and efficiency improvement of medical service process by Internet technology, and the western region paid more attention to encourage the application of telemedicine to solve the difficulty of seeing a doctor. In the pandemic stage, the " Internet plus service price" was the policy focus in all regions, mostly in medical insurance payment, and the policy difference was not obvious among the eastern, central and western regions.

Before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the policy of " Internet plus healthcare " promulgated by the local governments in eastern, central and western regions had different emphasis and different characteristics. Our suggestion was to improve the policy system, standardize industry supervision, strengthen information security, orderly interconnect medical insurance, and actively promote the exchange of policy experiences among the provinces.

Telemedicine; Internet plus healthcare; Policy analysis; Local governments; COVID-19