"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:

1. Creating a new model of people-centered quality integrated health care that strengthens primary care as the core of the health system
2. 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
3. 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
4. Reforming public hospitals, so that they focus on complicated cases and delegate routine care to primary-care providers
5. Changing incentives for providers, so they are rewarded for good patient health outcomes instead of the number of medical procedures used or drugs sold
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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.