Beijing (via Xinhua): China has decided to start public hospital reform with pilot programs in selected cities or districts in each province, autonomous region and municipality, according to a cabinet guideline passed Wednesday.
The guideline on public hospital reform was discussed and approved by an executive meeting of the State Council chaired by premier Wen Jiabao.
The public hospital reform is aimed to establish a reasonable, effective and optimized medical service system, and to fully motivate all medical workers to provide the public with safe, effective, convenient and affordable medical services, according to a statement issued after the meeting.
It was stressed at the meeting that public hospitals must retain its orientation of serving public interests and giving top priority to people’s health.
According to the statement, a coordination mechanism should be established between big public hospitals and grassroots medical service institutions so that they could cooperate with each other with proper division of labor.
The management system of public hospitals should also be reformed so that operation and supervision of the hospitals are conducted separately, it said.
The quality of public hospitals’ medical services should be improved, whereas their incentive mechanism of income distribution should be perfected, the statement said.
Public hospitals should also gradually quit profiting from drugs and rely on medical service charges and government subsidies.
The guideline also encourages non-governmental sectors to invest in and set up non-profit hospitals.
Asia Healthcare Blog
2 Comments
That the PRC’s citizens tolerate the rampant graft in the provision of prescription drugs is due to a lack of awareness of a better model of doing so?
Knowledgeable Chinese that have studied abroad or who read articles by climbing the Wall know that there is a better way to receive health care in other parts of the world, do they not?
What are your thought?
The Chinese are fully aware that there are better ways to do things. For that matter, so are Americans. Unfortunately for both, actually bringing about change is difficult. The reason that graft in the provision of prescription medications is tolerated has to do with compensation mechanisms for doctors. The PRC statement did a marvelous job of understating this huge issue, only saying that compensation mechanisms for doctors had to be “perfected”.
Doctors in China are underpaid relative to the amount of time they put into school and work. Their status in society is, therefore, artificially low since status in China is largely conferred by the amount of money one earns. They know this to be true. The government knows it to be true. But, it is also true that the number of doctors in China is very small. So, politically, the doctors have a lot of leverage to do what they want to since a strike or something to that effect would cripple an already hobbling healthcare system.
The political compromise is that doctors are de facto allowed to take in funds through grey channels. The government makes a big show out of condemning the practice, but can’t actually take any actions to stop it until they 1) Up salaries, or 2) give doctors full freedom to go private.
The Chinese do have to be given a lot of credit for actively working to change their health system. What has to be understood is that they have made unprecedented strides in health system improvement since the early 1980s when the term “healthcare professional” was most widely associated with barefoot doctors or TCM practitioners. They are on their way, and unhindered by the state-level political considerations that are so prevalent in other nations. The political compromises they have to make with interest groups like doctors are much easier to deal with.