"How to build a high-quality and value-based service delivery in China?"
This report recommends that China maintain the goal and direction of its healthcare reform, and continue the shift from its current hospital-centric model that rewards volume and sales, to one that is centered on primary care, focused on improving the quality of basic health services, and delivers high-quality, cost-effective health services.
With twenty commissioned background studies, more than thirty case studies, visits to twenty one provinces in China, the report proposes practical, concrete steps toward a value-based integrated service model of healthcare financing and delivery, including:
- Creating a new model of people-centered quality integrated health care that strengthens primary care as the core of the health system
- Continuously improve health care quality, establish an effective coordination mechanism, and actively engage all stakeholders and professional bodies to oversee improvements in quality and performance
- Empowering patients with knowledge and understanding of health services, so that there is more trust in the system and patients are actively engaged in their healthcare decisions
- Reforming public hospitals, so that they focus on complicated cases and delegate routine care to primary-care providers
- Changing incentives for providers, so they are rewarded for good patient health outcomes instead of the number of medical procedures used or drugs sold
- Boosting the status of the health workforce, especially primary-care providers, so they are better paid and supported to ensure a competent health workforce aligned with the new delivery system
- Allowing qualified private health providers to deliver cost-effective services and compete on a level playing field with the public sector, with the right regulatory oversight and
- Prioritizing public investments according to the burden of disease, where people live, and the kind of care people need on a daily basis.
This Knowledge Note is a condensed form copublished by the World Bank and the World Health Organization. To learn more, please access the full paper here.