Evaluation of Chinese healthcare system

Abstract

China has been committed to the development of Chinese healthcare since the founding of the People's Republic of China. For the past 60 years, great successes have been achieved by China in maintaining social stability, increasing sustainable economy growth, and improving living standards; unfortunately the development of Chinese healthcare has been slow in contrast with the rapidly developing economy. The failure of marketization, the unsound medical insurance system, insufficient financial input, and the gradually increasing inflation (along with the pressure of 13.3 hundred million populations) raises a number of challenges. These include the inequitable healthcare resource allocation, the affordability problem of accessing healthcare services, and the questionable quality and efficiency of healthcare provision.

This thesis brings some economical evaluation of Chinese healthcare from history to the current day, which focuses on analyzing the developments of the Chinese healthcare system. In addition, this thesis tends to evaluate Chinese healthcare from the perspectives of structure, financing, and healthcare resources in order to identify the existing problems and made suggestions for further improvement.

As a case study, we inspect treatment of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). A comparison between Finnish healthcare and Chinese healthcare systems is made bringing up the importance of health prevention, rehabilitation and utilization of ICT. Improvements in healthcare systems do not necessarily require taking more other resources. What is required is to honestly perceive weaknesses of the current realization, understand the reasons, make some prioritization, and then start to implement the required improvements simultaneously tracking customers' feedback. In doing all this, it is especially important to understand that spending more money does not necessarily mean the higher quality is achieved, but for a small amount of money, a great effect is possible, if the targets in system improvements are wisely selected.