The 20th CPC Central Committee's Third Plenary Session was held in Beijing from July 15th to 18th, 2024, where the "Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Advancing China's Modernization" was reviewed and adopted. This "Decision" not only covers a wide range of reform areas, but also emphasizes several important contents in the healthcare and public health sector. The following is a detailed interpretation and summary of these contents.
The document proposes deepening the reform of the medical and healthcare system, promoting coordinated development and governance of medical services, health insurance, and pharmaceuticals. This includes expanding the supply of high-quality medical resources and promoting their balanced distribution across regions, ensuring that major illnesses and serious conditions can be treated within the province, general illnesses within cities and counties, and minor ailments within townships and villages.
Deepen the reform of public hospitals with a focus on public welfare, establish a charging mechanism that prioritizes medical services, improve the compensation system, and establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism for staffing. Guide and regulate the development of private hospitals. Innovate regulatory approaches in the healthcare sector. Establish mechanisms to support the development of innovative drugs and medical devices, and improve the mechanism for the inheritance and innovation of traditional Chinese medicine.
To better meet the healthcare needs of the people, the Decision stresses the need to accelerate the construction of a hierarchical medical treatment system and promote the development of close-knit medical alliances. This will strengthen primary healthcare services, enabling more people to see a doctor and receive good medical treatment at their "doorstep".
The decision also proposes to steadily advance the construction of 13 categories of national medical centers and 125 national regional medical centers, which will cover most of the provinces with weak medical resources. These measures will significantly enhance the capacity of primary medical services, with over 75% of township health clinics and community health service centers reaching the basic standard... In recent years, China has continued to push forward the expansion and decentralization of high-quality medical resources.
In the relay race of healthcare reform, medical services, medical insurance, and pharmaceuticals are closely intertwined. The Decision proposes to explore the establishment of a unified and efficient policy coordination, information communication, and supervision and regulation mechanism among medical services, medical insurance, and pharmaceuticals. Related departments should work together in the same direction to exert synergy and make healthcare reform more directly benefit the people's lives, better meet the new expectations of the people for a better life.
Build a comprehensive social security system
Establish a sound mechanism for funding and adjusting the benefits of basic pension and basic medical insurance, and gradually raise the basic pension for rural and urban residents. Leverage the supplementary role of various commercial insurance products. Advance the provincial integration of basic medical insurance, deepen reform of the payment system, improve the system for large-disease insurance and medical aid, and strengthen supervision of medical insurance funds.
Build a comprehensive support and service system for population development
Effectively reduce the costs of childbirth, rearing, and education, improve maternity leave policies, establish a birth subsidy system, enhance the level of basic population and child health public services, and increase the tax deduction for childcare expenses. Strengthen the construction of a universal preschool education service system. Improve policies and mechanisms for the development of elderly care services and industries. Optimize the supply of basic elderly care services, cultivate community elderly care service institutions, improve the operation mechanism of publicly-run elderly care institutions, encourage and guide enterprises and other social forces to actively participate, promote mutual aid elderly care services, and promote the integration of healthcare and nursing services. Rapidly address shortcomings in elderly care services in rural areas. Improve services for the elderly who are orphans, disabled, or have lost their ability to care for themselves, and accelerate the establishment of a long-term care insurance system.
Furthermore, the Decision also contains a series of provisions related to the development of data elements and artificial intelligence:
Cultivate a national integrated technology and data market
Establish a mechanism for market evaluation of contributions and remuneration based on contributions for production factors such as labor, capital, land, knowledge, technology, management, and data. Accelerate the establishment of a system for promoting the development of digital economy, and improve the policy system for promoting the digitalization of industries. Build and operate national data infrastructure to promote data sharing. Accelerate the establishment of systems for determining the ownership of data, market transactions, distribution of rights and interests, and protection of interests, and enhance the ability to govern data security. Establish an efficient, convenient, and secure mechanism for cross-border flow of data.