Health care in China: The role of non-government providers

Comparing Public and Private Hospitals in China: Evidence from Guangdong

“…In combination with other evidence on health service delivery in China [10][11][12][13][14]20], we conclude that ownership reforms alone are unlikely to dramatically improve or harm quality. System incentives need to be designed to reward desired hospital performance and protect vulnerable patients, regardless of hospital ownership type.…”

“…Evidence suggests that providers respond to the incentives of the system in similar ways, such as avoiding unprofitable (public health) services and overproviding profitable high-tech diagnostic services and drugs [11][12][13]. Some studies find that private hospitals, seeking to attract patients in a public-dominated system of insurance and delivery, often charge prices that are lower than those of public hospitals, attract lower-and middle-income patients, and achieve higher patient satisfaction [13]. Similarly, Huang and colleagues [14] find that non-government hospitals charge prices that are generally lower than or equal to those of government hospitals.…”

Consumer Satisfaction with Public Health Care in China

“…Quite different from many other countries, China's public health care tends to exclude the low income groups due to the relative higher direct and indirect cost while the private sector tends to serve disproportionately the low-middle income groups [27] . A survey of Chinese health patients showed widespread dissatisfaction with public providers, mainly high user fees and poor staff attitudes, is driving patients to seek cheaper but lowerquality care from poorly regulated private providers [26] .…”

“…Several surveys revealed that the overall public satisfaction with public health care in China is considerably low and some possible contributing factors include high cost of health services, poor provider attitude and conflict with the health providers [12,27] . To improve public participation and effectiveness of the undergoing health reform initiatives in China, this research assesses consumers' satisfaction with public health care delivery in Kunming City, Yunnan Province.…”

Ethnic Minorities and Regional Development in Asia : Reality and Challenges

“…While health care provision is still dominated by state owned facilities, the main revenue of health delivery systems comes from out-ofpocket fees based on a regulated fee schedule (60 per cent). The other two main sources are insurers (20 per cent) and government subsidies (20 per cent), although the latter accounts for a progressively decreasing share of providers' revenues (Eggleston et al 2008;Liu et al 2006). …”