Beijing hospitals overwhelmed by outsider patients

A concentration of high quality medical resources in Beijing daily lures hundreds of thousands of people from outside the city who come seeking better medical care, according to the Outlook Weekly magazine.

China's National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) has calculated that some 220 million people have sought medical help in Beijing. More than 30,360,000 of them were from other cities and provinces and have seen doctors in the city's top-level hospitals.

Fang Laiying, the director of Beijing's Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission, said outsiders accounted for one third of the patients in top-level hospitals, and that the ratio was higher in some specialized facilities.

And as demand speeds up, Beijing's medical service staff has been increasing in recent years. In 2013, the number of medical staff in Beijing reached 294,000, growing by 6.3 percent compared with a year earlier. These staff dealt with some 220 million patients the same year, an increase of 10.9 percent over the previous year.

According to the NHFPC, among the patients from outside Beijing, about 23 percent were from Hebei province, which is adjacent to the capital.

Yang Jianxin, director of the provincial health and family planning commission, said it is mainly because of the poor medical and health services in the province. "Tens of thousands of patients are transferred to Beijing or Tianjin for better treatment every year," he added.

Zhen Zhijian, member of Chinese Medical Doctor Association, said Beijing should not become a center for medical treatment. "Patients from other cities and provinces flood into Beijing for medical help, which not only increases the medical costs, but also increases the city's burden," Zhen added.

Zhen suggested that Beijing's neighboring cities and provinces should establish medical institutions to treat excessive patients, which could stimulate local development of medical services.