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Healthcare IT
China to phase-in unified healthcare network
The Chinese government says it will gradually phase-in a unified, highly effective and interconnected healthcare network.
This is part of the long-expected healthcare reform blueprint, which was released on Monday.
The Guidelines on Deepening the Reform of Healthcare System, endorsed jointly by the Central Communist Party of China and the State Council (the country’s Cabinet) on Monday, was the result of about three years of intense debate and frequent revision.
The Guidelines expect the country to have a basic healthcare system that can provide ‘safe, effective, convenient and affordable’ health services to the country’s more than 1.3 billion citizens, town dwellers and rural residents alike.
The provision of basic health as a ‘public service’ is expected to require significant government funding and close supervision.
The Item 14 of the Guidelines covers computerisation in healthcare. According to the text, the government will establish a ‘practical and shared’ medical information system. It will ‘vigorously’ promote computerisation in the sector, especially in the areas of public health, medical care, medical insurance, drugs, finance and administration.
The government will also speed-up building information systems in the healthcare sector.
One of the focuses is to ‘consummate the public health information system’, which is now largely a disease surveillance network.
It will also improve the ‘timeliness and completeness’ of individual hospitals’ and public health agencies’ reporting capabilities.
Resident health record will be another focus, which will form the basis of rural and community health information networks. Hospitals will be focusing on electronic medical records and administrative systems.
Leveraging networking technology, collaboration between hospitals and community health centres will be strengthened and extended to remote areas.
A consolidated social security system is also part of the plan, under which consolidated, card-based system will be developed to facilitate patients’ visits to care providers. Hospitals are expected to become more transparent.
The government will also build and consummate state, provincial and municipal drug supervision, examination and untoward-effect monitoring information network. A drug supply-and-demand information system is also expected.
The reform comes amid strong criticisms and complaints from the public over the current healthcare system, which is difficult to access and increasingly unaffordable.
The pressing issue also strained the country’s social security system, which is already severely burdened by expensive education, an ageing population and unemployment, not to mention the looming economic crisis.
The effective socialist healthcare system the Communist Government in the 1950s and 1960s was dismantled in the early 1980s as the country started its economic reforms. Public hospitals became underfunded, resulting in lots of hospitals forced to generate revenue through prescribing drugs and treatment with high profit margins, which were often unnecessary and resulted in a huge financial burden on patients, most of whom were not insured. In rural areas, the healthcare system simply collapsed.
A series of medical reforms have been gradually implemented since 1997, aiming at providing basic medical insurance to urban areas and cooperative schemes for farmers. However, in 2005 the Central Government admitted that they were not successful and started planning for a new round of reform.
The government’s National Development and Reform Commission published the preliminary version online for public scrutiny last October. Public attention and intense debate forced planners to revise the document repeatedly, which delayed its release.
In January, it was announced that the government would dedicate US$124 billion to healthcare reform over the next three years.
A more detailed three-year implementation plan, which has yet to be published, will supplement the Guidelines.
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