China's quality medical resources now more evenly distributed: NHC

BEIJING -- China has made continuous efforts to ensure that quality medical resources are channeled to the community level and that they are more evenly distributed among regions, according to the National Health Commission (NHC).

With the commission's help, 87.7 percent of China's county hospitals had reached capacities equivalent to second-tier hospitals by the end of 2022, and 45.6 percent had reached capacities equivalent to third-tier hospitals, NHC official Li Dachuan said at a press conference on Thursday.

China has a three-tier system for ranking hospitals, with third-tier hospitals, which have the largest number of beds and provide comprehensive medical services, at the top of the system.

To improve its medical services, the country has worked to enhance clinical specialty competence. Li noted that by the end of last year, the central government had invested a total of 2.54 billion yuan (about 370 million U.S. dollars) to support the construction of 508 key national clinical specialty projects across the country.

Next, more resources will be pooled to support local governments as they boost the development of high-demand specialties such as cardiovascular surgery, obstetrics, orthopedics, anesthesiology, pediatrics, psychiatry and pathology, Li said.