China to improve medical services in communities
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China will focus on improving community health-care services as its health-care reforms gather pace in the next five years, said a Communist Party of China (CPC) guideline document released Wednesday.
The CPC Central Committee's Proposal for Formulating the 12th Five-Year Program for China's Economic and Social Development (2011-2015) was adopted at the Fifth Plenum of the 17th CPC Central Committee, which ended on Oct. 18.
New health-care resources would be channelled to rural and urban communities, it said.
China would encourage medical workers, especially general medical practitioners, to serve long terms in grassroots medical institutions with favorable policies, it added.
The government would further reform public hospitals so that larger hospitals in the cities can cooperate with grassroots medical institutions, it said.
Private medical institutions would be encouraged to improve the quality and efficiency of medical services through competition, and meeting the public's need for diverse medical services, the document said.
The government would increase financial support for medical services, deepen health-care reforms and give more incentives to medical workers to meet the basic needs of all Chinese, the document said.
A health insurance system that covers both rural and urban China would be further improved with gradually increasing standards, it said.
Conditions are poor in China's many grassroots medical institutions, where misdiagnoses and medical accidents are often reported, but larger hospitals with better resources often complain of being overburdened by patients from all parts of the country.
