Further healthcare reform

Hospitals making money by selling drugs has long been the root cause of expensive medical bills for patients and the increasingly poor healthcare service they provide. The experiment Beijing is to launch from July 1 at two hospitals will hopefully break this model and reduce the cost of healthcare services.

Beijing Chaoyang Hospital and Beijing Friendship Hospital will prescribe medicines to patients at the same price the hospitals pay for them, scrapping the 15 percent they used to add to the purchase price. But at the same time, patients will be charged for seeing doctors on the principle of higher fees for senior doctors. For example, to see an ordinary doctor, the fee will be 42 yuan ($6.60), with 40 yuan reimbursed from healthcare security accounts. But if the most senior expert is consulted, the fee will be 100 yuan, so the patient will have to pay 60 yuan after the 40 yuan reimbursement.

Beijing healthcare authorities have set specific targets to monitor the experiment, which is expected to pave the way for broader reforms.

Two variables can be expected to have an impact on the success of the trial. Whether the connection between doctors and drug companies will be cut is one of them, since some doctors are paid by drug company representatives to prescribe their drugs to patients. If this connection persists, doctors will still profit from prescribing drugs, even if the hospital doesn't.

Also, we are yet to know whether medical workers will get more or less money after the new practice is introduced. According to the calculation by healthcare experts, patients will pay less on average after the new model is adopted. But it will be unlikely the hospitals will maintain their level of service if the reform makes a dent on the income of their medical workers.

Despite such variables, this move is certainly a step in the right direction, as it is meant to rectify the distorted relationship between medical workers and patients. Doctors should never play the role of drug seller and their service should be rewarded. The architect of this reform will hopefully study it carefully and adjust it accordingly so that it produces the desired results.