Experts suggest ways to improve child health services
Chinese parents like to rush to big general and specialist hospitals whenever their children feel uncomfortable, regardless of the seriousness of the ailment.
Their action results in bad experiences for both doctors and patients, and experts are calling for joint efforts by health authorities, hospitals and patients to improve the situation.
In Europe, a generalized model of child health services includes lots of primary care, plenty of general hospitals, and fewer specialist hospitals.
Ingrid Wolfe, with Evelina London Children’s Hospital and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says such a system works because children in Europe, just like in China, are experiencing an epidemiological shift from communicable to non-communicable diseases, and deaths in children under 14 are declining substantially.
“Primary care should be the core of child health system,” Wolfe says.
In China, the government has been strengthening community-based primary care, such as introducing general practitioners and cutting down medicine prices.
But most community hospitals only provide everyday healthcare to young patients, such as vaccination, and cannot or are not allowed to treat diseases, according to Zhang Lina, a health adviser with Shichahai Community Health Center, a community hospital in Beijing.
She also suggests an improvement in the patient referral system between community hospitals and big and specialist hospitals.
Jiang Yuwu, director of the pediatrics department at Peking University First Hospital, says it is understandable that people rush to big and specialist hospitals because they want to get their children the best healthcare from top experts, especially when they don’t trust doctors in primary care or small hospitals.
He says if fewer people go to small hospitals, it’s less likely small hospitals can develop, and the more crowded big and specialist hospitals will be — resulting in a vicious circle in the healthcare system.
As to the opinions that small hospitals are incompetent, Jiang says he believes doctors in small hospitals are good enough to treat common diseases, and when they cannot treat the disease, they will recommend the child to suitable hospitals.
Besides, in big and specialist hospitals where lots of patients gather, children easily get crossinfections, Jiang adds.
He suggests the government invest more into pediatric primary care and small hospitals, reduce medication prices there while increasing prices in big and specialist hospitals. Such moves, he says, will encourage parents to go to primary care when their children have only minor ailments.