Rural Healthcare Reform Lags in China Beyond Third and Fourth Tier Cities

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In my previous posts, I took a look at the impact China’s investment in rural healthcare is having on third and fourth-tiered cities like Nan Chang and Ying Tan. My latest visit to Ta Qiao, an agricultural village with 6,500 residents, however, indicates there’s still a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to improve the 620,000 village clinics in rural China.

Norman Yung, Chief Marketing Officer, Carestream Health

In Ta Qiao, there are a total of five medical clinics, one government sponsored and four privately owned and operated, that treat simple illness and medical problems. I visited the government-sponsored clinic located within one kilometer of village square.  The largest medical facility in Ta Qiao, comprised of a two-story building owned by the government, it stood in stark contrast to the small store-front private clinics.

Trained as physicians, the couple who runs the Ta Qiao medical clinic sees approximately 20 to 30 patients per day.  When I arrived at the clinic around 9 am there were already 10 patients in the reception area with another three to four in the semi-private patient rooms.

The Ta Qiao village clinic is a basic medical facility equipped to treat common illness, deliver children and take vital signs.  It has a reception area, admission office, rooms for dedicated departments (e.g., internal medicine, maternity, pharmacy, etc.) and about 10 patient beds.  The clinic has some rudimentary medical equipment, but does not have any X-ray imaging equipment.

Ta Qiao Government Medical Clinic

To get an X-ray, a villager would travel by car to a neighboring hospital in a city like Ying Tan. A taxi costs about 75 RMB each way.  Compound that cost with the fact that the villager will be responsible for paying the medical services rendered.  A common treatment for the administration of shots (e.g., antibiotics) ranges in cost from 30 to 50 RMB.  For someone who is making only 1,200 to 1500 RMB per month, healthcare costs add up quickly.

Villages like Ta Qiao, which is up to an hour by car from nearby hospitals, have to rely on government-sponsored and private clinics to receive the most basic healthcare services. These rural clinics need more medical equipment and trained professionals to provide more critical healthcare services affordably to villagers.  This will only become more important as China’s population ages.