Exploration On Management Of Urban Counterpart Medical Support To Rural Areas In Chongqing: Effectiveness Assessment To "Project Of Ten Thousand Doctors' Assistance For Rural Health"

Historically there has been difficulty in maintaining a balance between resources assigned to health care in rural and urban areas of China. The development of rural medical services have been slow compared with urban areas, this has unfairly resulted in rural residents not benefiting from advances in society. To overcome this imbalance, the practice of urban hospitals assisting rural health care facilities was developed. This has played an important role in developing health care in both rural and urban areas, improved the overall provision of rural health care, and promoted the coordinated and sustainable development of a health care career pathway.To further support the provision of rural health care a project was developed called"Support for rural health care by ten thousand physicians". This was a cooperative project between the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Finance, and the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine. A key feature of the project was that rural health care facilities received assistance from physicians working in urban hospitals.In recent years this project has been supported by government and implemented between rural and urban tertiary hospitals in 665 counties in some poorer parts of mid-western China. In the participating rural hospitals, great progress has been reported in the provision of hospital management, health infrastructure and medical health care. Not only has the project improved service in the rural hospitals, it has also helped doctors from urban hospitals to gain a better understanding of the conditions their colleagues in rural hospitals work under, and the responsibility they have to assist their rural counterparts. In addition, the project has to some degree eased the financial burden and difficulty of providing visiting doctors for rural hospitals.While the project has reported good outcomes, government nevertheless needs to ensure that the project is in fact meeting government requirements, being effective, and achieving its stated goals. Hence the purpose of this article is to investigate the effectiveness of the project. Chongqing is located in the mid-west region of China and consists of both large urban and rural areas, it reflects the two dimensional structure of rural and urban health care throughout mid-western China. Chongqing can be seen as typifying the situation throughout the region with 70% of health care resources concentrated in the urban/city area of Chongqing. Health resources available in rural areas are very low in comparison to the urban area. This makes Chongqing an ideal location to evaluate the effectiveness of the"Support for rural health care by ten thousand physicians"project.This article explores the effectiveness of the project"Support for rural health care by ten thousand physicians"in Chongqing city, using a system of key indicators from the Ministry of Public Health. Perspectives were considered from the Government Health Bureau, support hospital, assistance hospital, and participating physicians. The work of the support organization and the improvement of the assisted hospital were surveyed. The practices of the nationwide project"Support for rural health care by ten thousand physicians"were analyzed to determine the advantages and disadvantages of the project in Chongqing city. Combining all these indicators has led to some recommendations being made with the aim of improving the effectiveness of this project.