China to advance healthcare services for rural-urban areas

Poverty alleviation is a major development goal worldwide and has been identified as a national priority in China, reports CGTN.

While much of the Chinese health care reform effort has targeted health-related poverty due to hospitalization, less attention has been paid to reducing health-related poverty through strengthening primary health care.

To address this gap, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is funding a multi-year project in collaboration with the National Health Commission in China that aims to prevent medical impoverishment by strengthening the local primary health care system.

China has strengthened its primary healthcare system, promoted a hierarchical medical service system so that more patients can receive treatment close to home, and how digital health tools such as telemedicine and online consultations connect remote areas with medical resources in large cities.

We also discuss how these reforms improve accessibility and overall service quality for ordinary people.

China has the largest number of diabetic patients in the world. In 2021, diabetes-related health costs in China were as high as $165.3 billion. This study evaluates the policy effect of replacing hospitalization service with outpatient service and reducing diabetes-related avoidable hospitalizations by improving outpatient benefits package.

A difference-in-difference model was used to analyze the effect of improving outpatient benefits package level of diabetes from 1800 Yuan to 2400 Yuan per capita per year.

The reduction of diabetes-related avoidable hospitalisations (AHs) can be achieved via the provision of timely and effective primary healthcare (PHC), which has made diabetes AHs rate a widely adopted indicator for evaluating the performances of PHC systems.