“With things still not market-led, organizations like ours are facing huge challenges and difficulties,” Hu Lan, President and Director of hospital investment firm AMCARE Corporation, said at a conference in Shanghai in June.
Healthcare spending as a slice of China’s GDP also remains small at around 6% in 2013 compared to 17% in the United States, World Health Organization (WHO) data show.
Reforms to reduce hospitals’ reliance on drug sales also faces a revolt from doctors who argue this will take away a key revenue stream at a time when medical staff are overworked, underpaid and often violently abused by angry patients.
“Every few days you hear about a doctor being beaten or even killed. This situation is a huge mental burden for doctors,” said Wu Xiaobo a doctor at the Wangjing Hospital in Beijing in a recent viral video campaign for doctors’ rights.
As for DXY’s Li, his firm now plans to change tack and set up an offline clinic in the eastern city of Hangzhou this year to pilot potential healthcare reforms – outside the state sector.
“We were hoping we could leverage changing policy and do something on mobile and digital,” Li said. “We found it’s just too slow, so the only way to do it is out on our own.”