East China’s Jiangsu province will arrange closer partnerships between top-tier hospitals and grassroots medical services to provide health management and healthcare services for urban and rural residents alike in a more inclusive and coherent manner.
It was a bit over one o'clock in the afternoon. In the general surgery room of Gaochun District People's Hospital, Qiu Yudong, a famous hepatobiliary surgery expert, had just finished an operation. The expert who has a hectic schedule in Nanjing Gulou Hospital is currently serving as the head of general internal medicine at Gaochun District People's Hospital, responsible for department management, outpatient diagnosis, making the rounds of the wards, and operating on patients.
As a member of the medical partnership program, Gaochun District People's Hospital became a branch hospital of Naning Gulou Hospital, a top-tier hospital in Jiangsu.
Seven departments in the district hospital such as the department of digestive internal medicine and radiology have hired top-notch doctors from Gulou Hospital as their supervisors.
With the partnership program, patients at the district hospital will gain access to the diagnosis and treatment by the experts from top-tier hospitals and transfer treatment has been made much easier.
The district hospital has seen a steady increase in the flow of outpatients since the partnership program was launched half a year ago. The number of complicated surgeries dealt with by the district hospital has also increased by more than 30%.
The partnership program has also benefited the local people and help with the standardization of the treatment procedures at the district hospital, which has in turn contributed to the improvement of the diagnosis and treatment of the grassroots medical services.
In the partnership program spearheaded by the second-tier hospitals, top quality medical resources such as remote imaging and remote consultation have been able to be localized at the township hospitals and community healthcare centers so that people at the grassroots level can enjoy the services of the experts from top-tier hospitals.
The medical partnership program has been extended across the province with all the state-run hospitals taking part to come up with 311 partnerships in varied forms. 190 million outpatients sought medical services at grassroots medical centers between January and July, according to statistics released by the provincial commission of healthcare and family planning. The figure stands for 60% of the entire flow of outpatients recorded by all the hospital in the province.
