Basic completion of the national regional medical centre by 2025

The National Development and Reform Commission held a regular press conference in July.

Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and four other departments jointly issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Implementation of the Construction of a Quality and Efficient Medical and Health Service System" (hereinafter referred to as the "Implementation Plan"), proposing to strengthen the construction of national regional medical centres and provincial regional medical centres.

"This year, the focus will be on including 12 provinces and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which have a shortage of high-quality medical resources and high local motivation, in the scope of construction, completing the national planning layout in 2023, and basically completing the construction of national regional medical centres in 2025." Director of the Political Research Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Commission's spokesman Jin Xiandong said at a regular press conference held in July on the 19th, the "14th Five-Year" period, the National Development and Reform Commission will work with relevant departments to further accelerate the construction of the layout of national regional medical centres, from the pilot to the surface to promote.

Jin Xiandong pointed out that, at the same time, according to the relevant arrangements of the Implementation Plan, in the next five years, the National Development and Reform Commission will also work with relevant departments to build provincial regional medical centres on a grid basis, and support the construction of about 120 provincial regional medical centres in various places, so as to guide provincial capitals and super (mega) cities to export high-quality medical resources to areas with weak medical resources within the provincial territory, and speed up the construction of high-quality medical resources. This will speed up the sinking of quality medical resources to the grassroots level and extend them to the masses, providing an important guarantee for achieving the goal of "no major illnesses leaving the province".

How has the construction of regional medical centres been going in recent years?

Jin Xiandong introduced that in October 2019, in order to implement the spirit of the ninth meeting of the Central Committee's comprehensive deepening reform committee, the National Development and Reform Commission, together with the National Health and Wellness Commission and other departments, formulated and issued the "pilot work plan for the construction of regional medical centres", proposing "selecting hospitals according to key diseases, selecting places according to demand, cooperation between hospitals and localities, and joint construction by provinces and ministries "The work idea is to guide high-level medical institutions in cities with rich medical resources, such as Beijing and Shanghai, to build national regional medical centres in areas with high patient outflow and relatively weak medical resources, by building sub-centres and branches.

In June 2020, after extensive consultation with all parties, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Health and Wellness Commission approved the first batch of 10 pilot projects, including Fudan Zhongshan Xiamen Hospital and Fu Wai Hospital Yunnan Hospital, and supported the infrastructure construction and capacity enhancement of the projects according to the standard of central investment subsidy of no more than 500 million yuan for each pilot project.

"After more than a year of construction, the first batch of pilot work got off to a smooth start, with some of the pilot hospitals that started operations earlier getting a faster boost in medical standards and initial improvements in the flow of medical care for the masses, achieving phased construction results." Jin Xiandong said.

He also cited the introduction of more than 50 innovative technologies at Fudan Zhongshan Xiamen Hospital, which has filled the gaps in Fujian Province and Xiamen City. After the opening of Zhengzhou Hospital of Beijing Children's Hospital, the number of outpatient and inpatient visits to Beijing Children's Hospital in Henan Province in 2020 decreased by 82,600 and 2,542, respectively, compared to 2016, a reduction of 63.1 per cent and 51.3 per cent. In addition, in June this year, the National Development and Reform Commission, together with the National Health and Wellness Commission and the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, approved the second batch of 16 pilot projects.