1、As health care reform in China continues to draw a great deal of public attention, many industry professionals agree that its success hinges upon reforming the countrys public hospitals.The issue recently came to the forefront of debate during a medical forum in Beijing. Chinas ongoing reform of gov
2、ernment-run hospitals must retain its goal of serving the public interest. Photo: CRIs Emily Henessy has more.As an integral part of Chinas ongoing health care reform, the reform of government-run hospitals must retain its goal of serving the public interest.But public hospitals have encountered var
3、ious problems, which simply cannot be avoided during the process of health care reform.Zhang Meiying, Vice-chairman of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, used the phrase toughest nut to describe the reform of public hospitals as the most complicated and difficult part of the enti
4、re health care reform project.We have only reached the preliminary state of the entire reform. The reform remains and will remain the focus of livelihood issues. The difficulty is that public hospital reform has not kept pace, which might offset what we have achieved. For instance, public hospitals
5、only chased after profits, and government funds were wasted on the medical services and drug departments. So public hospital reform is the toughest nut to crack.Liu Guoen, a professor at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, is also a member of the Expert Consultative Committee on
6、Chinas health care reform. He points out that the main problems have resulted from a shortage in resources that failed to meet rapidly growing medical service needs.Liu says this paradox may further develop into conflicts between patients and medical staff; therefore, increasing the supply capacity
7、is the fundamental approach to solving the problem.The supply and demand contradiction is the root of the problems that have appeared. Demand may fluctuate with changes in lifestyle, genetic information, aging and salary levels. So our medical service system should adapt our policies to the fluctuat
8、ions of the demand. If not, a contradiction emerges. So our reform of the health care system is and will be a work in progress.Liu also says to better serve the public interest, public hospitals should change their profit-oriented focus, and government funding should be used to buy medical equipment
9、 for the publics benefit.First, the government should guarantee that public hospitals run smoothly and ensure the active participation of professional doctors. This will also determine whether the reform will succeed or not. Second, public hospitals should abandon their reliance on prescription drug
10、 sales. Third, the hospitals should restructure themselves according to modern hospital management models and strive to act in the publics interest. Fourth, the government should decrease the number of public hospitals and encourage them to participate in market competition through restructuring.For CRI, Im Emily Henessy.
