Registration fees at community health centers in Shanghai will
be covered by the city to encourage more people to visit the
smaller facilities for minor ailments instead of crowding into
city-level hospitals which are far more expensive to run,
government spokeswoman Jiao Yang announced yesterday.
Jiao Yang, Spokeswoman of Shanghai municial
government
She said the city would also take steps to improve the training
of doctors at community health centers.
Previously city residents had to pay a seven yuan (US$87 cents)
registration fee every time they visited a health center. As part
of the new rules patients will only be charged half the normal
registration fee at larger hospitals if a community health center
sends them there, according to Ma Qiang, deputy director of the
Shanghai Health Bureau.
The exempt fees will be covered by the city's medical insurance
fund for those covered and by district and municipal governments
for those who aren't, he added.
The city's community health centers deal with 27-30 million
visits a year and that number is expected to increase significantly
under the new policies, said Ma. "Our ultimate purpose is to cut
down medical costs," he said. "Community medical service will be
safe, convenient and economical for local residents."
The health bureau will now handle the accounting for all
community health centers, collecting all income and paying the
bills under an annual budget it draws up. Doctors will no longer be
paid based on how much revenue they generate, the bureau said.
Ma said the rules would stop health centers from padding the
bills in order to drive up profits...a tactic city residents have
complained about for years.
The bureau will also set up a consortium to buy drugs for the
health centers in bulk to slash costs and push medical centers to
accept the results of tests done at other facilities to cut down on
duplication.
The average medical bill for people visiting community health
centers in the first half of this year was 108.69 yuan. This is
down 8.6 percent from the same period last year, according to the
bureau.
To help the centers deal with an expected influx of patients more
general practitioners will be trained at large hospitals to work in
the small health facilities.
(Shanghai Daily?November 17, 2006)
