Medical service providers play a bigger role in ensuring the success of reform than the amount of money the government spends on the issue, a senior health official said yesterday.

Huang Jiefu, vice-minister of health and a member of the CPPCC National Committee, urged the country's 6 million medical professionals to experiment with reform on their own rather than waiting for the government to dictate policy.

"Under the framework highlighting the government's leading role and the need for reform efforts to emphasize the quality of public service, a bottom-up approach would make sense, since no single plan can remedy all of the problems plaguing the healthcare system," he said.

What the more than 20,000 public hospitals nationwide "should do to assist in the reform drive is the most urgent issue to be addressed", he said.

However, none of the reform proposals submitted by organizations such as the World Health Organization and Peking University mention bottom-up efforts, he said.

Ten organizations had been asked to submit proposals on how the country's medical system should be improved.

Reshaping the medical system is the only way forward, Huang said.

Under the current system, under-funded State hospitals have been known to order unnecessary medical examinations and prescribe high-priced drugs just to make ends meet. The situation has imposed heavy burdens on patients and wasted medical resources, Minister of Health Chen Zhu, who is also a member of the CPPCC National Committee, said.

The government has been increasing investment in the health industry in recent years.

"However, most of the money is used to build infrastructure and hospitals rather than compensating medical professionals," Lin Jiabin, director of Beijing Hospital and a member of the CPPCC, told China Daily.

He said heart surgery, which takes 10 surgeons about 10 hours to complete, costs 2,400 yuan ($336) in China compared with $40,000 in the US.

"Reform should adhere to market pricing for medical services so doctors have the appropriate incentives," he said.

He said such an environment would be the only safeguard against the loose ethics that have plagued the healthcare industry.

Chen said the reforms should allow for reasonable price hikes for some medical procedures under the reform plan.

Vice-Minister Huang said the government work report at the NPC session would address the reform plan.

The finished version of the plan should be released after the close of the NPC and CPPCC sessions, Chen said.

He also agreed on Monday that a scheme to streamline the medical bureaucracy would be unveiled.

"Exactly how and which departments are to be restructured should be based on the principle of smoothing out the supervisory system and reducing overlap," he said.

(China Daily March 5, 2008)