CRI听力:Health Care Reform Depends Upon Changes in Public Hospitals

As an integral part of China's ongoing health care reform, the reform of government-run hospitals must retain its goal of serving the public interest.

But public hospitals have encountered various problems, which simply cannot be avoided during the process of health care reform.

Zhang Meiying, Vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, used the phrase "toughest nut" to describe the reform of public hospitals as the most complicated and difficult part of the entire 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 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 China's 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 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 fluctuations 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 for the public's 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 sales. Third, the hospitals should restructure themselves according to modern hospital management models and strive to act in the public's interest. Fourth, the government should decrease the number of public hospitals and encourage them to participate in market competition through restructuring."

For CRI, I'm Emily Henessy.