The National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) of the People’s of China, in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance, launched a three-year pilot program for basic health system reform in Xicheng District and Pinggu District of Beijing, Cangzhou of Hebei province, Chifeng of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Tieling of Liaoning province, Jilin of Jilin province, Changning District and Pudong District of Shanghai, Zhenjiang of Jiangsu province, Shaoxing of Zhejiang province, Wuhu of Anhui province, Nanchang of Jiangxi province, Linyi of Shandong province, Yichang of Hubei province, Xiangtan of Hunan province, Chengdu of Sichuan province, Guiyang of Guizhou province and Xining of Qinghai province.

The primary goal for the pilot program is to promote basic health reform policies and tackle key issues in the reform.

On April 11, 2014, the commission held a meeting to launch the pilot program. Ma Xiaowei, vice ministerof the commission, said medical and health system reform requires clear aims and direction: first, enhancing fairness and accessibility of public health service, satisfying people’s needs and curbing medical expenses are goalss of the reform; second, grassroots medical and health institutions should focus on prevention, integrate prevention and treatment, and lay equal stress on traditional Chinese and Western medicine; third, strengthen the government’s main responsibility of establishing, investing and administrating grassroots medical and health institutions; fourth, reinforce the construction of infrastructure and personnel training, and improve management and services; fifth, motivate medical staffers.

Ma also emphasized that local governments in the pilot program should follow suggestions on the consolidation and improvement of basic medicine system and the new basic operating mechanism issued by the General Office of the State Council, and should accomplish 12 reform tasks, including ensuring a financial compensation fund, improving the management of government revenue and expenditure, regulating the management of basic public health service funds, utilizing the medical healthcare and insurance fund, raising medical staffers’ wages, improving the personnel system, improving the merit pay and evaluation system, promoting hierarchical treatment, strengthening the basic medicine system, improving services, and stabilizing the number of rural medical staffers. In conclusion, each local government should reinforce organization and leadership, actively explore and innovate, focus on key issues, enhance communications, complete monitoring and evaluation, and achieve substantial progress in reform.

The director of the Social Security Department of the Ministry of Finance, people in charge of the pilot program from related departments, bureaus and local health and family planning administrative unit, and some technological experts were also at the meeting.