Shenzhen will introduce a local healthcare reform plan in June this year, according to information from the recent Shenzhen Municipal People’s Congress session. 

The new healthcare reform plan to be launched by the city will ensure government’s leadership in healthcare and classify medical institutions into non-profit-oriented and profit-oriented institutions. The plan will also attempt to reform the financing, purchasing, profit distribution and personnel systems of public hospitals in the city.

Shenzhen is likely to implement the zero margin policy on drug sales in all public hospitals of the city under the plan. Local experts estimated that the city’s public hospitals will lose CNY 400 million this year if this policy is implemented and this revenue gap will need to be made up by government funding.

According to Jiang Hanping, Director of Shenzhen Municipal Health Department, the government will need to increase its funding in the healthcare sector by CNY 1.7 billion under the proposed new healthcare reform plan in 2008. He said the Shenzhen Municipal Government hopes to introduce the new reform plan in June, but the implementation measures of the plan will need to be finalized following consultations with the personnel and fiscal finance departments of the municipal government.