Research On Public Hospital Reform In Villages And Towns Of Northern Jiangsu Province

Perfection of medical treatment and public health system, being a significant reform tasks involving people’s livelihood, concerns humans’ basic health right. The improvement of medical treatment and public health system is a puzzle discussed by governments at all levels, who wants to construct a system pattern both guaranteeing justice and efficiency. “The difficulty of getting medical service and high cost of getting medical treatment” has become a general characteristic description for the conditions of China’s medical and health services. In China, public hospitals are a significant component of the medial and health system, and public hospital reform poses direct impacts on the outcomes of the comprehensive medical-health system reform.Since the reform of economic system in 1980 s, medical and health system has reformed continuously to adapt changes of external economic environment. During the reform stage, market competitive mechanism and management mechanism was introduced, hopefully, to solve problems faced by public medical institutions, including financial burden, rigid administration, and others. Based on following spirits of central documents, local governments adopted different reform patters for medical and health system by integrating practical conditions.When reforming public hospitals, the special role of village and town public hospitals in the network of rural medical and health care should be notices, upgrades of efficiency should not be the only focus and public welfare should not be overlooked. Great changes occur after privatization reform of public hospital in towns and villages, including renewal of medical devices, upgrades of service quality, and certain solutions for fiscal difficulties of local governments. However, characteristics of public hospitals in towns and villages, particularities of medical service and defects of privatization result in new dilemmas within a certain period after privatization reform of public hospitals in villages and towns. The purpose of privatization reform is to introduce scientific and effective management; reformed management level is not improved actually and privatized public hospitals in towns and villages almost show no developmental space. During new stage of medial reform, the government advocates that public hospitals must follow the principle of public welfare orientation and clearly presents that health clinics in towns and villages should be valued and presents a mandatory requirement that one public hospital must be kept in every township. The policy orientation determines that town public hospitals, which experienced the privatization reform, are now facing a new reform of reverse-privatization to public hospitals. During the new medical reform stage, which aims at reversing previous “efficiency-coming-first”, reform measures to guaranteeing justice are created from positive and favorable perspectives, but various practical problems are faced in practical operations. Therefore, there are lots of problems required to be improved continuously.Viewing from the public welfare of public hospitals, normative analysis, comparative analysis and literature research method are used in this paper to compare and analyze two typical reform patterns for public hospitals in township and to summarize the advantages and disadvantages. In addition, detailed analysis of specific cases is conducted to conclude that the reform pattern of privatization cannot not be adopted by all public hospitals in towns and villages and the public welfare orientation should be restored. Also, recommendations are presented for reform of public hospitals in towns and villages under current conditions.