Public hospital reform begins in counties

BEIJING - China's county-level hospitals are to lead the country's reform on public healthcare facilities, under a guideline published Friday on the central government's website.

It introduced a pilot program covering 300 county-level hospitals, which are expected to undergo reforms in finance, management and human resources by 2015 to enhance their capacity.

The program plans to wipe out the existing financing mechanism of Chinese hospitals relying heavily on medicine sales while their services are undervalued.

County hospitals are known as the backbone of the country's health care network in rural areas, and directly serve over 900 million Chinese. Rural patients, however, tend to flood into major hospitals in cities to seek better quality services.

The program has set a goal of restoring people's trust in county-level medical facilities and serving 90 percent of all the patients within each county.

Health minister Chen Zhu said on Friday that the county-level reform would generate experiences for future reforms of major public hospitals in cities.