China to break monopoly of state-run hospitals

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, April 09, 2004

China to break monopoly of state-run hospitals

With increasing public complaints on medical services, China plans to attract more social investment to break the monopoly of state-run hospitals.

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With increasing public complaints on medical services, China plans to attract more social investment to break the monopoly of state-run hospitals.

"While the government is increasing investment to ensure basic medical services, we also encourage social organizations and individuals to join the medical service sector," executive vice health minister Gao Qiang said here Friday at a two-day national health conference closed Friday.

"Investors from the social sector are allowed to make profit and obtain reasonable payoff," Gao said.

Statistics from the ministry showed that by the end of 2002, China has a total of 297,000 hospitals, of which 32 percent are state-run, 18 percent are of collective property rights, 46 percent are private and four percent with overseas investment.

"Even though the number of non-state-run hospitals is increasing very fast in recent years, over 90 percent of them are small private clinics," said Cai Renhua, director of the National Health Economic Institute.

"The state-run medical agencies are still in a predominant position and provide 95 percent of all the diagnose, treatment and hospitalization services," he said. "None of the other types of hospitals have the capability to compete with them."

In addition to attracting social investment, Gao said China is planing to restructure and reform the state-run hospitals. "The reform should be carried out in a well-planed way instead of being sold out simply."

Meanwhile, Gao said China will modify hospital administrative regulations and set up different economic policy to different types of medical agencies.

Statistics showed that Chinese spent a total of 350 billion yuan (about 42.3 billion US dollars) for medical services every year.

Compared with developed countries, there is still large room to probe in the medical service market in China, Cai said.

Disease surveillance, reporting network

The ministry vowed to continue strengthening epidemic surveillance and reporting network to improve the country's capability of handling public health emergencies.

"The health ministry will tighten supervision and inspection to local hospitals and health agencies. Those who failed to report timely, or covered epidemic information, should bear administrative or legal consequences," said Gao.

Since China was hit by the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic last spring, the Health Ministry has exerted huge efforts in improving its disease surveillance and report systems.

On April 1, hospitals and disease prevention and control centers nationwide started to report infectious diseases to the central government through a new computer network. As against an average of five days for the central government to learn of an outbreak after being discovered by a hospital, the computer network shortens reporting to 1.4 days.

To ensure the smooth operation of the network, Gao said local medical agencies should set up special office responsible for epidemic reporting and epidemic information should be reported to local disease control and prevention centers within required time.

Disease control and prevention centers at all levels should inspect local hospitals and clinics regularly and carry out analyses to the reported information, Gao said.

Currently, the Health Ministry publicizes information of communicable diseases and public health emergencies on its official website on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.

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