This Day, That Year

Item from Dec 14, 1987, in China Daily: A groundbreaking ceremony for a major expansion project for the prestigious Peking Union Medical College Hospital was held on Saturday in Beijing.

The project will boost the hospital beds from the current 600 to 1,200 and its medical staff from 2,000 to more than 3,000 in three to four years. The investment will be more than 140 million yuan.

Peking Union Medical College Hospital, founded in 1921 by the Rockefeller Foundation, has been listed as the country’s best hospital for many years.

Treating more than 10,000 patients every day, the hospital has more than 4,000 medical staff and about 2,000 beds for patients.

Although expanded several times, the hospital is still busy.

It is the epitome of the overburdened public healthcare system.

Public hospitals are the main providers of healthcare in China. These hospitals, which numbered more than 12,700 by the end of last year, provided 2.85 billion outpatient and emergency services last year, accounting for more than 87 percent of the cases provided by all hospitals in China, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Private facilities accounted for the rest.

To ease the pressure, the wider application of internet technology in the medical sector is the new trend in the country’s medical reforms.

Many services, such as online registration and payment, have greatly benefited patients and reduced the number of painstaking trips to hospitals.

Take Peking Union Medical College Hospital for example. The hospital released an app for registration in 2015. Patients can make appoitments online seven days in advance.