The Shanghai government has unveiled sweeping reforms of the city's medical system, with the ambitious target of covering 90 per cent of urban and rural residents by the end of next year.
It plans to establish an integrated network linking community health centres with long-term hospital treatment and specialist wards, with a view to reducing the pressure on emergency wards from dealing with minor ailments. The nearest emergency ward is the first port of call for most Shanghai residents - for anything from a cold to a heart attack - making it difficult for health professionals and the authorities to maintain individuals' medical records and consistency in treatment.
A survey by the municipal health bureau found that more than half of the people seeking outpatient treatment at the city's top hospitals had relatively simple conditions, including the common cold or a cough, or were having follow-up treatment for a pre-existing problem, such as high blood pressure.
Under the new plans, 10 of the city's districts are to experiment with registering local residents at community health centres where teams of family doctors - similar to the British system of general practitioners - will be responsible for individual patients' primary health care. Patients would require a reference from their family doctor in order to see a hospital-based specialist.
Three districts - Pudong, Changning and Xuhui - have already introduced pilot schemes for the community-based health network, and the proposals call for it to be extended over the next four to five years.
However, the new system faces an uphill battle against public perceptions. A survey of 3,000 local residents, published in the Shanghai Morning Post yesterday, found just under 60 per cent of respondents avoided community health centres because they felt they provided lower quality health care.
