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State Council rolls out plan to intensify medical reform

Updated: Jan 9,2017 9:24 PM

The State Council released a circular in a recent effort to enhance medical reform during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020).

According to the circular, China has made substantial improvement in medical undertakings since the 12th Five-Year Plan, with 95 percent basic medical coverage and steady integration of urban and rural insurance.

In the next five years, the nation looks to build a complete public hygiene and medical service system, guarantee medicine supply and decrease personal expenses on medical care.

The circular encourages hierarchical diagnosis and treatment, which more than 85 percent of cities should start using within 2017.

Meanwhile, efforts should be made to optimize distribution of medical resources, clarify roles of medical institutions at different levels and promote the sharing of resources and diagnosis results.

Health centers in towns and communities should improve capacity in diagnosing common diseases. Public hospitals should be guided in the hierarchical system to play a role in treating complicated and serious diseases.

As part of the hierarchical system, family doctors should be expanded to cover the entire population by 2020.

The circular also pushed for establishing an efficient system for modern hospital management separating government administration and business operation, while also laying out policies to ensure public hospitals’ role as an independent legal entity.

At the same time, the government should increase input and adjust medical service prices to reduce operational costs of public hospitals while curbing the unreasonable rise of medical expenditures.

It urges the establishment of human resource management and a payment system that operates well in the medical industry, providing performance-related salaries to hospital employees.

According to the circular, an efficient national medical insurance system should also be established, with sustainable fundraising channels, and an adjusted reimbursement ratio.

The plan aims to reach a nationwide medical insured rate of 95 percent by 2020, and promote an integrated national insurance and payment network, a target that should be reached this year.

Meanwhile, the guarantee mechanism for those with critical diseases should be strengthened, enabling critical illness insurance to be precisely targeted at poverty-stricken people. At the same time, commercial health insurance is also encouraged to diversify coverage.

The government also vowed to establish an orderly mechanism for medicine supply, with efforts to reform medicine production, circulation and usage, promote medical institutions at all levels to prioritize the use of basic drugs, and boost the structural adjustment and upgrade of the medical industry.

The circular also urged efforts to streamline administration, and build a diversified regulation system.

By 2020, the supervision should cover 100 percent of medical institutions at all levels, and those violating regulations and engaging in illegal actions will be held accountable, stated the circular.