CRI听力:24-hour Registration Services Introduced in Hospital

Peking Union Medical College Hospital, a renowned general hospital in Beijing, recently started a 24-hour appointment registration service to ease the morning stress of high numbers of registrations and restrict scalpers' illegal sale of appointment tickets.

The booking service starts at 8 p.m. every day, which enables people to make medical appointments for the next three days. Yu Xiaochu, the hospital's deputy director, says the registration windows used to open daily at 6:30 a.m., and those who showed up could make an appointment only for the same day.

"With the 24-hour service, patients are able to make medical appointments any time they want. Now they can make a next-day appointment the day before, and then go back home and have a rest instead of standing in line for the whole night."

Allowing people to make appointments at 8 p.m. the day before means that patients don't have to rush to the hospital early in the morning and wait for hours for the registration windows to open.

Wang Xiaobo, director of the hospital's outpatient department, says now that the 24-hour service has started, patients no longer wait in line with lounge chairs in front of the registration windows for the entire night.

"Previously, lounge chairs were everywhere at night - in the registration hall as well as outside the building. Many people slept here in hopes of getting medical registrations early in the morning, but now things are different."

Ms. Jing is a patient who just made an appointment at the hospital. She says she feels lucky to be able to enjoy the 24-hour service.

"Before the 24-hour service was started, I got very tired when I had to make a medical appointment here. I couldn't sleep for the whole night at that time and had to keep standing in line in front of the registration window. But now, I got an appointment in the evening, and I can go back home to sleep at night."

Apart from offering patients more convenience, the new measure is also intended to crack down on scalping to some extent. Some doctors say the number of patients who buy appointments from scalpers has decreased. Here is Yu Xiaochu again.

"With our 24-hour service and the increasing number of appointments, there are fewer opportunities for scalpers to survive. We've found that the number of scalpers recently decreased."

Yet, some still ask if the 24-hour will really alleviate the general difficulty of still having to schedule doctor's appointments. Yu Xiaochu says the problem is mainly caused by the country's imbalanced allocation of medical resources, but hospital administrators will keep making an effort to try every means that is favorable for patients.

"What we are doing is kind of a trial operation. We'll see if the 24-hour service trial will resolve the problem of hospital registrations. This is one of our explorations."

According to Peking Union Medical College Hospital, 20 percent of patient appointments are made in person at the registration windows, while 50 percent are done by phone and 30 percent are reserved for people with hospital-issued appointment cards.

As one of the most popular hospitals in Beijing, the Peking Union Medical College Hospital has been designated a pilot hospital for ongoing medical reforms. In 2010, it provided consultations for up to 12,000 people a day.

For CRI, I am Zhang Wan.