Draft rules hope to raise transparency in hospitals
Beijing will require hospitals to disclose information on pricing, treatment plans and procedures for filing complaints in an attempt to reduce patient complaints and improve transparency.
The Ministry of Health issued a draft document earlier this week listing information-disclosure requirements for medical institutes.
The document mandates that hospitals tell patients about the quantity and charges for medicines, implants, disposable medical supplies and services for each treatment plan.
Zhang Wei , assistant professor of management at the Shanghai-based China Europe International Business School, said the new regulation would give patients a better idea of the total cost of treatment.
Hospitals supposedly have a price list on every service and medicine. But patients often have no idea how much they will end up paying.
Extortionate medical bills and errors are often the causes of disputes - sometimes resulting in mass protests and even leading to a bizarre profession called 'medical troublemakers', who stage protests, damage hospital property, or even harm doctors on behalf of disgruntled patients and their families.
After almost four years of interdepartmental bickering and horse-trading, the government in April finally released its blueprint for medical reform, aiming to overhaul the ailing health system and slash costs.
A key to this is transparency on how bills are calculated to avoid arbitrary charges, unnecessary surgery and excessive use of expensive drugs.
The draft also requires hospitals to tell patients of the fees for expensive services such as a stay in the intensive care unit, dialysis, fitting of artificial joints, organ transplants and scans, as well as medicine not covered by insurance schemes.
Such requirements may standardise the information, but most hospitals already had price lists and usually informed patients beforehand as deposits were required.
More importantly, public awareness of service quality at each hospital is a key to reducing disputes.
'There are internal assessments of the quality of medical services for each hospital, but they are not disclosed to the public,' said Zeng Yixin , a professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou.
Professor Zhang said local governments should compile a valid database on the qualities of all hospitals.
'For example, in the US, hospitals have to release information about the mortality rate of their heart bypass surgery,' he said.
But cancer patient Yan He, 28, of Hefei, Anhui, said hospitals informed him of the fees, but he could not afford the medicine.
He is now more than 100,000 yuan (HK$113,600) in debt after being diagnosed last year.
