A September 5 report in China Youth Daily
said Beijing citizens have expressed dissatisfaction over an
inspection report on medical fees published by the municipal health
bureau on August 28.
It found that five of the 49 Grade-3 hospitals
inspected had collected arbitrary charges, but members of the
public said the report looked at trivial instances of misconduct
but ignored major ones.
"Internal inspections such as this could help
regulate the behavior of medical staff to some extent," said a
woman named Xiao, but the most serious case reported was that of a
nurse who collected an extra 900 yuan (US$111) through clerical
error. "Others only involved several yuan. Are these trivial
problems really what the public complain about?"
"Sometimes, I need to go through many checks to get
diagnosed for a very common disease. But I have been told later on
by other doctors that some of the checks were not necessary," said
Dai, a retiree from a motorcycle factory.
Wang Jinwei, a retiree from the General
Administration of Sport, said he went to hospital for aching legs,
but registered at the endocrine department by mistake.
"When I finally saw the doctor after waiting for a
long time, he did several checks without asking me anything. They
included a lumbar check, blood pressure check and blood test, and
cost me more than 500 yuan (US$62)," said Wang. "When I asked him
about my aching legs, the doctor just asked me to go to the
orthopedic department."
Wang said his mistake could have easily been
identified and remedied before costing him so much in unnecessary
tests.
Exorbitant medicine prices have also been a major
complaint.
According to the China Health Statistics Yearbook
(2004), the average cost for medical diagnosis and treatment was
215.6 yuan (US$27) per person per time in Beijing, double the
national average of 108.2 yuan (US$13).
The proportion spent on medicines was also
particularly high in Beijing; in 2003, 72 percent of the 262.78
yuan (US$33) average cost per person per time was on medicine, with
only 23.7 yuan (US$3) and 17.9 yuan (US$2) going on checks and
treatment respectively.
"There is no fixed standard for medicine prices,
and sometimes drugs are much more expensive in hospitals than in
drugstores," said a man named Zhang.
China Youth Daily identified two main
reasons that most people still buy medicines in hospitals despite
the expense.
The first was that getting reimbursed for purchases
made in drugstores was an overly complicated process.
Foreign Enterprises Service Cooperation, which
provides personnel and social security services to over 80,000
Chinese employees working in more than 6,000 foreign enterprises,
said on its website that a prescription with the seal of a
medicare-designated institute and an invoice from a designated
drugstore are needed for reimbursement.
The other reason was that medicines in designated
drugstores are not cheap either, since lower price drugstores are
usually not medicare-designated.
(China.org.cn by Yuan Fang, September 13, 2005)