The country will continue to enhance reforms this year with an eye on ensuring hospitals provide better services at reasonable prices, Vice-Minister of Health Wang Longde said.

“As reforms are carried out, competition among hospitals will become more fierce and administration on them will be stricter and more scientific,” the vice-minister said.

Wang made the remarks at a three-day national meeting of health, which concluded over the weekend.

Poor services at state-owned hospitals and high medicine prices have grabbed headlines in recent years.

The latest official statistics indicate that hospitals treated 1.2 billion patients in 1999, 20 million fewer than in 1995.

By the middle of this year, the country’s 16,600-plus hospitals will be separated into for-profit and non-profit ones, with the latter making up the majority.

Non-profit hospitals, also called public or state-owned ones, will be treated with favorable finance, tax and pricing policies.

Even so, many investors, including foreign ones, have expressed strong interest in establishing joint venture, profit-making hospitals with existing state-owned hospitals, some large hospital presidents said at the conference.

The commercial ones, with high-quality service and big salaries, will lure more patients and better doctors from the public hospitals, said Yang Binghui, president of Shanghai Zhongshan Hospital.

Moreover, a new medical insurance system, which has started to work in some urban areas, is making it possible for people to choose the public hospital they wish to use, unlike the old system under which people must use certain hospitals.

Patients also complained about doctors writing improper prescriptions to increase the cost of medical services to the patient.

In most hospitals today, profits from drug sales make up as much as 60 percent of their total income.

In the future, medicine sales income will be handed over to the health administrations, who will return a certain share of profits to the hospitals.

The government also will provide less financial support to public hospitals and will allow them to increase prices of good medical services.

Improving service quality is a vital way for hospitals to survive the reform, Wang said.

A proposed regulation on medical accident treatment, which has been sent to National People’s Congress for approval, is expected to come out soon to protect the legal rights of both patients and doctors.

(China Daily 02/19/2001)