Research On The Practice Of Essential Public Health Services Equalization In Minhang

To ensure all people get access to public health services equally, the Party Central Committee and the State Council released"Opinions about deepening the health care system reform"in march, 2009. During the past several years, Minhang district government has strengthened it's responsibility to provide essential public services to vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, old people of the community, and so on. It has accumulated useful experiences about essential public service equalization. Equalization of essential public services is a new domain of public administration research. This research can contribute to the fulfillment of scientific concept of development, the construction of harmonious society, and the building of social fairness and justice.Based on literature review, this paper analyzed the background, causes and representation of the unequal status of public health services, as well as the process and purpose of the equalization of our country's public health service equalization. Using theories of public economics and public administration, we define the concept of public goods and public services, analyse the demand and supply, discuss the differences between supply and production of public services, and expound the relationship between fairness and efficiency, connotation and characters of the essential health service equalization. We investigated the situation of the public health service equalization in Minhang district, and point out the existing problems, difficulties and their causes. Refer to the success of public health services home and abroad, we raise some suggestions.The key point of effective providing of public health service is finding out the best condition of the public health resources allocation, thus to maximize the total social health welfare and achieve Pareto Optimum. The supply of public health services is based on the public health service system. Government should take its responsibility of equal access to essential public health services. Vulnerable groups should get more attention when it comes to equalization. We can improve the efficiency by setting up a mechanism which focus on quantity, quality and customer satisfaction. Information technology can support the essential public health service equalization.To provide better public health service to our society, the urgent tasks at present are: making a law to ensure equalization of essential public health services; improving cooperation between health department and other government departments; strengthening government's financing responsibility; setting up multi-department cooperation mechanism; enhancing the construction of public health human resources; setting up health security system.