Zhang Yang

nicolezyyy@163.com

THE city’s health and family planning commission has announced its official goal of making Shenzhen a forerunning “Healthy China” city, according to a conference held by the commission Thursday.

The commission laid out a three-step plan for achieving the goal: building Shenzhen into a healthy city by 2020, establishing an international medical center by 2025 and making Shenzhen a global model for other healthy cities by 2035.

The work conference also summarized the city’s health-care sector’s most fruitful efforts made over the past year.

Shenzhen was nationally recognized as a model city for carrying out reform in public health care last year. Four of Shenzhen’s reform efforts were honored as national consummate health-care reform measures.

Nine new grass-roots medical groups were set up in eight districts in Shenzhen last year. Currently, there are 12 medical groups in Shenzhen, covering all districts and new areas in the city.

Shenzhen became one of the three pilot cities in China to adopt the Diagnosis-related Group (DRG) system, a new way of calculating medical bills for patients, last year. Nine public hospitals were chosen as pilot hospitals for trial-testing the system.

Public hospitals in Shenzhen also adopted a centralized procurement method through a third-party organization to slash medication prices last year, estimated to save nearly 1.5 billion yuan (US$238 million) a year for residents. The prices of 1,594 medical services in public hospitals were also adjusted, further reducing patients’ financial burdens.

Three new hospitals were put into trial operation last year. Five hospitals, including four public hospitals and one private hospital, were accredited as top-grade. Currently, there are 12 top-grade hospitals in Shenzhen.

In 2017, a total of 100 medical teams were introduced to the city through the 3R Project, which aims to bring top-notch medical experts and resources to Shenzhen.

The city inducted 2,739 new practicing doctors, and added over 3,000 beds to the city’s hospitals over the past year.