The Responsibilities Of The Government In Urban Community Health Service

Community health service is an important component of urban health work and its construction is a basic step on the way to realizing the goal of establishing a universal primary care system. It is a fundamental responsibility of the government to provide the social public with an economic, convenient, and fair health service.After over 10 years' development, urban community health service, as a system innovation, is still at a premature developmental phase which calls for continuous exploration and perfection in practice.Adopting a method integrating case study and empirical investigation, the author describes and analyses at relative lengths the development process, the organizational system, the funding mechanism and the assessment of the achievement and effects, of the community health service in the City of S in Hubei Province. The City of S is one of the trial cities of urban community health service. Two of its districts were once established as the exemplar districts of national community health service. Although it has discovered an effective service management model in the exploration of the construction, management, and development of urban community health service, there still exist problems to be reflected upon.The result of the investigation shows that the effective provision of urban community health service depends on the organization, leadership and support of the government. The principal responsibility of the government in urban community health service are manifested in the following aspects: First, the government is the organizer of community health service, making development plans, setting up the service organizations according to the standard, and allocating the health care resources; Secondly, the government is the constructor of community health service, providing human and financial resources; thirdly, the government is the supervisor of community health service, establishing the quality standard of community health service and supervising its implementation.The current major problem of the health service system in our country still lies in the difficulty for the mass to access the service and the high expenditure for the service, therefore, the reform of the system of community health service must be put forward with an even greater effort, so as to perfect the community health service system, better the quality of health service and lower the medical expenditure. The key lies in strengthening the government's responsibility and increasing the government's investment. The government should integrate community health service in its plan of economic and society development, set up stable funding channels, perfect the rules of two-directional medical transfer and first-treatment-in- community, consummate the system of medical insurance, improve the education and training of medical personnel for community health service, improve its functioning in admittance-approval and supervision of community health service organizations, set up a dynamic supervising system, and speed up the construction of a legal system for community health service.In a word, urban community health service is a fundamental social project, upon which the urban and town residents' health service security depends. The construction of community health service is conducive to the realization of the goal of universal health care.