Healthcare Updates from China
More Mobility and Improved Income Potential for Doctors
Breaking from tradition, the Ministry of Health is loosening regulations to allow doctors in China to practice at multiple locations. (Up until now, doctors have only been able to practice at the specific hospital where they are employed.) It listed three conditions under which doctors can practice at multiple locations: when assigned by the government to support rural healthcare needs or emergencies, when serving multiple hospitals within a community health system, or when formally accepting employment from more than one hospital. In each case, specific applications have to be filed with relevant entities. The third option, multiple employers, is estimated to increase a doctor’s income by more than 100,000 RMB (about $15,000). It is also being hailed as a way to increase access to skilled medical care.
Pay-for-Performance Policy and Other Cost Control Measures
“If a healthcare worker can do the work of one and a half or two people, and we increase his pay by 20 percent to 50 percent, we will be able to control costs while increasing compensation,” said Minister of Health Chen Zhu at a press conference. The pay-for-performance policy, enacted on October 1, is one component of China’s healthcare reform and has been garnering a lot of press recently. The Ministry of Health is also implementing policies to reduce the price hospitals may charge for pharmaceuticals. This year, 30 percent of hospitals are expected to reduce their profit margin for certain basic drugs to zero. Another component is the establishment of clinical pathways to standardize diagnosis and treatment in order to increase efficiency and control costs. Minister Chen noted that one outcome will be the reduction of the length of hospital stays. And, with the pay-for-performance policy, better outcome will translate to more income for doctors and healthcare workers.
Traditional Chinese Medicine: Science or Alchemy?
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) continues to be an area of focus for China as policy makers and practitioners craft strategies for continuing development. The Third Traditional Chinese Medicine Development Conference will convene November 16-19, 2009, in Wuzhou, Guangzhi, with the goal of publishing a strategic analysis of current status and future trends to be used as a reference tool for practitioners, policy makers and commercial developers. Meantime, an impassioned editorial in Worker’s Daily decries the fact that, more and more, TCM is being challenged to provide the same level of clinical trial evidence and scientific descriptions of modes of action as Western medicine. The editorial suggests that rejecting everything that science cannot explain is assuming that our scientific knowledge today is sufficient to explain everything.