International hospital dedicated to healthcare in China

As the first foreign-invested healthcare group in China, United Family Healthcare (UFH) has practiced what it calls patient-centered medical services, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We do not wait for people to get sick, but rather work with our patients to keep them well, to give them the tools that they need to stay healthy later all along their life cycle," said Roberta Lipson, founder of UFH, who has spent 30 years in China's healthcare industry.

Since the establishment of its first hospital in Beijing in 1997, UFH has set up nine hospitals and 14 clinics in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Qingdao, Boao, a famous town in Hainan province, and Shenzhen.

The expansion of the company, which focuses on general practice and setting up a life-long comprehensive healthcare system, in China is not fast, considering the fact that it has been in the country for so many years.

UFH has sent more than 1,000 medical workers to provide mass nucleic acid testing in different cities across China since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. They had collected over 2 million samples in total till late April of this year, according to the hospital.

Some of the company's hospitals and clinics had been closed due to COVID-19, which gave them the impetus to roll out an internet hospital, Lipson said.

Many problems can be resolved for patients without a personal visit to the hospital, according to Lipson. "We can go online and help them determine whether they actually need to come to the hospital or not, which is another way of protecting everybody," she said.

Surgeons with different specialties are listed on the official WeChat account of UFH’s Beijing hospital, with each doctor having a QR code. After scanning the code, medical consultation can be done in the form of leaving messages with photos or online videos.

UFH's patients were mostly expats in the early years after the company's hospitals were established more than 20 years ago, while now more than 70 percent of its patients are Chinese citizens.

China has made great progress in public health, according to Lipson, who compared the readiness of the country to deal with SARS with the readiness to cope with COVID-19. "There are places we can certainly do better. One is that the public health authority and the health care providers could cooperate in a more integrated way," she said.

As a medical institution, UFH sent doctors and nurses to Wuhan, Hubei province, to support the fight against COVID-19, and donated equipment like X-ray machines and ventilators. "We're very pleased to be able to make that contribution," said Lipson.

After dealing with SARS, UFH has had enough experiences to isolate its fever clinics from other parts of its hospitals and take other necessary measures to ensure safety for both patients and staff.

UFH was quick to acquire vaccines and had administered 800,000 doses of vaccines and done about 800,000 COVID-19 tests for the public by April of this year, according to Lipson.

UFH has also helped those people who cannot afford healthcare. It has promised to donate one percent of its annual revenue to the United Foundation for China's Health (UFCH), which was established in 2001, to support life-saving and life-changing surgeries and specialty care for orphaned children and those in need.

"It's a project that we love and we believe it's bringing very important help to people that really, really need it.' Lipson said.