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A new prescription

By Roberta Lipson (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-29 10:03

When we developed a business plan for a clinic and hospital facility to serve the international community and whatever segment of the Chinese population may ever be able to pay for private premium services, it turned out to be not only a great opportunity to demonstrate a different approach to healthcare, but also a very solid business proposition, with the possibility of replication if it succeeded.

'It can't be done'

We started approaching various officials in the Ministry of Health with this idea in the early 1990s, but the suggestion of private, for-profit healthcare in a socialist country was one that was mostly dismissed as a non-sequitur and a non-starter.

The concept, we were told, "could not be". We were either politely dismissed or summarily dismissed, until we met the foresighted leadership of the Academy of Medical Sciences, who helped us to make the case "from the inside" to the highest levels of the Ministry of Health.

We explained that having such a facility was an opportunity to examine approaches to healthcare gleaned from abroad and to see how it played out right here on Chinese soil.

Besides, we were only proposing a very small facility and at the time the officials took comfort that we would primarily be treating foreigners and, in fact, the existence of such a facility would prove a comfort to foreign tourists, investors and others considering traveling to Beijing or taking up temporary residence there.

We had been taking scores of delegations of Chinese public health officials and public hospital executives to the US each year to see for themselves some of the American palaces of modern healthcare.

They would marvel at, among other things, the comfortable environment, the fact that there was no smell of either disinfectant or bodily fluids, and the level of consideration shown to individual patients, only to conclude that it could not be replicated on Chinese soil. Our hospital would prove that many of these elements of patient-centered medical care could, in fact, be delivered in China.

Once we had secured the agreement of the Ministry of Health, we had to conquer the hearts of the Beijing Health Bureau. That proved even more difficult, partly due to the relationship between the two regulating bodies.

But it was necessary to have not only their blessing but their official stamp of approval (in addition to the other 180 stamps from various government agencies through the development process), as the final step to being given the license to open the facility.

We used the two years of design and construction to try to develop the concept at the bureau level, and finally the commissioner agreed to a visit. He was clearly overwhelmed by what he saw. It far exceeded his expectations, and at the end of the visit he was totally won over. He said that our hospital was an opportunity to "raise the bar" for the public hospitals in his jurisdiction, and has since become an avid supporter of our efforts.

Our little experiment in healthcare has grown to be a successful business, with facilities in four cities serving not only the expatriate population but a growing number of Chinese citizens who have acquired the financial wherewithal to improve their quality of life in many areas, including housing and education, and who now chose to buy better services in healthcare.

 

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