Medical dispute spreads to the countryside

In the long term, in view of the sour patient-doctor relations, fewer young people are thinking of medical school, thereby reducing the number of future doctors and affecting the provision of high-quality medical services. This could have a really bad impact on people in rural areas, where farmers don’t have access to high-quality medical services thanks to the imbalance in China’s medical resources. And, if doctors in rural areas grow excessively cautious about helping local patients for fear of a dispute, then the patients will have to travel to a city for treatment, bringing up the cost.

The solution to the problem does not lie simply in changing doctors’ behavior or improved patients’ understanding, although both are important in reducing the frequency of doctors–patient conflicts.

The root of the problem is actually found in the mismanagement of the medical industry. For example, as the country makes the transition from a planned to a market-oriented economy, where China has reduced the input in medical services, thereby forcing hospitals to resort to over-prescribed drugs and services to ensure normal operations and a profit. Medical spending in China accounts for about 5 percent of GDP, with the global average being around 10 percent, according to some estimates.

So, the authorities urgently need to increase spending in the sector and the incomes of doctors, while forbidding them from pocketing in any illegal gains. In this way, medical costs and complaints could hopefully drop, as fewer doctors over-prescribe.

The State should also spend more on community hospitals to make them more attractive to both doctors and patients. Under current conditions, given their low pay, poor equipment, and fewer opportunities, most community hospitals are unattractive to truly skilled doctors and, in a vicious cycle, the lack of skilled doctors makes it even harder to attract patients, who would rather prefer to go to a better hospital in the big city. Not surprisingly, this unfair concentration of resources has increased the workload on doctors in the bigger hospitals and made it difficult for patients to receive good medical care.

Doctors also need to be more open and offer more options for patients if they cannot handle the illness themselves. After all, in spite of the many advances in modern medicine, there are still many diseases that cannot be cured through known medical techniques. At the same time, traditional Chinese medicine might serve as an alternative treatment as it has been proven effective in helping many patients and there are reports of cases where traditional Chinese medicine worked in defeating some troublesome diseases.

Unfortunately, many doctors who are skilled in Western medicine remain skeptical about traditional Chinese medicine and strongly oppose providing any such treatment to their patients, thereby depriving the patient of the right to choose.

If the patients can get their illness stopped, either by modern or traditional means, then their complaints about the medical system might decrease. So why not respect their right to alternative treatments?