Thu, 02/04/2010 - 14:13
NEWS FLASH: China sets public hospital reform guidelines
by Karl Zhong
Shanghai. February 4. INTERFAX-CHINA - The State Council has approved guidelines outlining the public hospital reform, the central government announced on Feb. 3.
According to the guidelines, each province, municipality and autonomous region will select one to two cities to conduct the reform on a trial basis before gradually expanding the reform throughout the country.
The guidelines also stipulated five tasks for trial public hospital reform to achieve, notably to improve China's health care system by optimizing the role of grassroots medical institutions and public hospitals, carry out reform of the management, operation and supervision of public hospitals, reduce cost-plus markups on drug prices, strengthen the internal management of public hospitals and encourage non-government investments in the health care sector.
Local governments are required to pay special attention to the public hospital reform and actively promote the reform.
"Key to the success of the public hospital reform will be if the government can remove the drug price markups," Chen Guodong, a pharmaceutical analyst from Xiangcai Securities, told Interfax on Feb. 4.
"Also, while the government should be able to carry out the trial reform smoothly, it will face challenges in expanding the reform across the country," Chen said.
In a China Business News report on Jan. 5, Du Lexun, a professor from Harbin Medical University's School of Public Health, predicted that there will be three distinguishing characteristics of the public hospital reform: setting up hospital management committees to manage hospitals as was done in Shanghai; separating hospital management and operation functions as was done in Wuxi; and entrusting large hospitals to manage smaller hospitals.
"The implementation of the public hospital reform will likely see more local health authorities establish independent hospital management entities to manage hospitals," Chen added.
