Chongqing hospital project saves costs

At Hualongqiao Community Health Center in Chongqing's Yuzhong district, general practitioner Wu Haijun usually sees around 100 patients a day. With the consent of the patients, he can access their previous medical examination results taken at other local hospitals.

"The system will alert me if a patient has had the same medical checks in the past three months," Wu said. "To ensure medical quality and safety, I will choose whether or not to consider the previous results from other hospitals in order to enhance the efficiency and save costs for the patients."

This year, Chongqing has rolled out a digital project facilitating the mutual sharing of medical examination results among local hospitals as part of its efforts to reform the healthcare system.

The city of over 32 million people has built a quality digital platform with unified standards to foster the mutual acceptance of medical records among 1,233 local medical institutions at all levels.

"This mutual recognition system can reduce repeated examinations and testing. So far, the number of records recognized by local medical institutions has reached 697,000, directly saving 157 million yuan ($22.1 million) in medical costs for patients," said Pan Jianbo, deputy director of the Chongqing Municipal Health Commission at the National Health Commission news conference held in Chongqing on Tuesday.

The conference focused on the nationwide promotion of the medical reform experiences of Sanming, Fujian province, that is aimed at improving the efficiency of medical service delivery and health insurance fund usage.

The city of Sanming is considered a pioneer in medical and healthcare reform. Starting around 2012, the city accelerated efforts to improve efficiency at public hospitals through coordinated reform measures encompassing medical services, health insurance and the pharmaceutical industry.

Zhang Yongxiang's 83-year-old mother had heart surgery at a large public hospital in Chongqing in 2021. Since then, she has visited the nearby Hualongqiao Community Health Center regularly for postoperative recovery.

"The mutual recognition of the medical exam results system saves us a lot of time and money," Zhang said. "We don't need to go to big hospitals for regular checks anymore."

Since March, the doctors at the community health center have uploaded over 3,000 medical imaging results to the database and viewed 312 results from other hospitals, recognizing about 40 percent of them.

"The most important part of Sanming's medical reform experience is to establish an efficient and effective leadership to promote systematic medical reform," said Chongqing vice-mayor Dan Yanzheng at the news conference.

He said Chongqing has set up a special task force for medical reform. There are eight major projects in the city, including ones improving the proximity of quality medical resources to the people, reforming digital medical image services and integrating medical care and elderly care services.