National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China: We Are Planning to Establish 100 City Medical Groups and 500 County Medical Communities; The time has come for the regional inspection center to pack
On January 10, the national healthcare management conference was held in Beijing. In the conference, the 2019 medical administration of the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China (NHC) was defined: to deepen the construction of hierarchical diagnosis and treatment and medical treatment partnership system, establish 100 city medical groups and 500 county medical community pilots, and strengthen comprehensive performance assessment of medical treatment partnership system.
With the intensive development of medical treatment partnership system, regional testing center will grow rapidly. Besides strengthening medical quality control, the medical institutions in the medical treatment partnership system should verify the inspection results mutually to promote the integration of high-quality medical resources within the system and realize regional resource sharing. The involvement of third-party IVD companies may make a great difference, which is supported by the circular on Implementation Plan of the Special Action of Shanghai to Build An Asian Medical Center City issued by, Shanghai Municipal Health Commission on January 8. With the guarantee of policies, the "qualified third parties" in Shanghai will take the initiative in establishing the third-party professional institutions, including pathological diagnosis center and inspection and testing center. And they will also assume the function of providing integrated services for medical institutions in the medical treatment partnership system.
In the past, a regional inspection center is established in the laboratory department of a leading hospital in the region and generally governed by the health department of the local government. The regional inspection center of this mode retained the public welfare of public medical institutions to the greatest extent and the control power of the laboratory department of public hospitals over the inspection center.
On the contrast, granting the initiative and control power of co-construction of inspection center to a "qualified third party” is a strong policy guarantee to the rapid development of regional inspection center. Moreover, the third party may also take over the inspection and testing items and centralized procurement of reagents and consumables in the laboratory department of hospitals in the region. All these will facilitate the intensive development of hospital reagent consumables.
Qualified third parties are an absolute minority. Evidently, the promotion of the construction and development of regional medical treatment partnership system will strengthen the control power of large third-party IVD companies in the co-construction of regional inspection center. The control power of laboratory department of public hospitals will gradually attenuate and small third-party IVD companies will further lose their living space.