Zhang Yang

nicolezyyy@163.com

SHENZHEN has become one of the three pilot cities in China to adopt the Diagnosis-related Group (DRG) system as a new way to calculate medical bills for patients at nine public hospitals in the city, according to a press release from the city’s health and family planning commission.

The DRG system was created in the United States in the 1980s to classify inpatient cases and categorize those with similar clinical features into one group because they are expected to use the same level of hospital resources. Patients in the same group will have the same standards applied to calculate their medical bills.

The system to be adopted in Shenzhen is called C-DRG, which has been developed independently by China. The system categorizes patients based on three key words — the severity of the disease, the complexity of the treatment and the level of hospital resources the treatment consumes.

The traditional charging system in hospitals charges patients item by item, but after the C-DRC system is introduced, patients who are diagnosed with the same disease and treated by the same methods will be charged a fixed payment.

The introduction of the system will discourage excessive treatment by doctors because their incomes will no longer be connected to how much medicine they prescribe or how many tests their patients undergo.