Assessment of Private Health Sector in China

Abstract

With the reform and development of the health service system, China now is Facing a shortage of medical services. A policy that permitted qualified medical professionals to engage in private practice was issued by the state government in 1980, and reconfirmed and detailed in later years. Public-private partnerships become the new target for Chinese government and researching institutes. Private Health Sectors have there competition advantage in a certain aspect, according to the features of their ownership system. Although the development of private practice was already a fact, debates related to whether government should ban privatization and limit the scale of private practice have never stopped. Arguments in favors of private practices were that the development of the private health sector could improve access to health services, and that efficiency and quality could be improved by introducing competition into the health care market. The way of assessment private sector is the key for study on Public-private partnerships in China. There is no uniform methodology for measuring quality of health care. The method commonly used is to measure respectively three quality dimensions: structure, process and outcome. Four indicators that are observable and measurable were selected for measuring clinic quality. These indicators are quality of health workers, amount of medical equipment, working conditions, and clinic supervisors’ evaluation. Since village clinics are very small health units with one to two health workers and limited medical technology and equipment, to a large extent the quality of the health workers will determine the quality of the services provided. The four indicators were measured for each type of clinic and then compared between clinic groups. This paper is mainly study on the assessment means of Private Health Sectors. Building information systems around Private Health Sectors was the hardest work for assessment research. This paper tries to make a point on how to avoid this problem, and do well assessment work.