Objective To investigate inpatients disease constitution, costs and rational drug use in the Karamay Central Hospital in 2014 and provide baseline data for further evidence-based study. Methods The information of disease classification, single disease drug use and expenditure of inpatients in 2014 were collected from the Hospital Information System (HIS) of Karamay Central Hospital. We classified the diseases according to the international classification of diseases coding (ICD-10), and analyzed the data by Microsoft Excel 2007 software including frequency, proportion, cumulative proportion and sample average. Results ① A total of 24 936 inpatients in 2014 were included, with male to female ratio being 0.96 to 1 and minority rate being 22.95%. The top three systematic diseases were respiratory diseases, diseases concerning pregnancy, child birth and puerperium and circulatory system diseases respectively; ② The top three age groups were 25 to 59, ≥60 and 0 to 4 respectively; ③ The top three costs per capita of single disease were pulmonary infectious, tumor chemotherapy and symptomatic treatment respectively; the top three western medicine costs per capita were tumor chemotherapy, symptomatic treatment and pulmonary infection; the top three Chinese medicine costs per capita were chronic kidney disease (CKD), angina and ischemic stroke. Conclusion The single diseases ranking and percentage of inpatients in 2014 of Karamay Central Hospital were different from the disease burden of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the country and even the whole world. Based on the above results, the respiratory diseases and circulatory diseases were selected as the systematic evidence-based pharmacy study goal.