GE Healthcare's 6th Greater Health Leadership Summit Ignites a New Engine for Value Growth in Non-Public Healthcare

For a long time, China’s healthcare system has been dominated by public medical institutions, with non-public healthcare serving as an important supplement and playing a unique role in meeting diverse healthcare needs.

However, as the tiered diagnosis and treatment system becomes increasingly refined and regional medical centers are rapidly deployed, the public healthcare supply side is shifting from an overall shortage to structural saturation. If non-public healthcare providers continue to adhere to the traditional positioning of “absorbing spillover demand from public institutions,” their room for survival is visibly narrowing.

On May 9, 2026, the Thousand-Person Conference of Leaders in China’s Health Industry and the 6th GE Healthcare Health Leadership Summit, hosted by GE Healthcare, was held in Changchun. Themed “Integrating Trends, Focusing on Synergy, and Fostering Harmonious Coexistence,” the summit brought together multiple academicians, clinical experts, and more than 1,000 leading figures from industry associations, non-public medical institutions, and the broader health industry.

During the conference, experts drew on their professional expertise to jointly explore how private healthcare can reconstruct its development paradigm through AI-driven medical innovation at the outset of the 15th Five-Year Plan. By focusing on establishing differentiated value propositions, the sector aims to forge a path of high-quality development that achieves synergistic win-win outcomes with the public healthcare system and resonates with the demands of the times.

In 2023, the issuance of the “Opinions on Further Improving the Healthcare Service System” set a certain tone for non-public healthcare, acknowledging that privately-run medical institutions may take the lead in forming or participate in medical consortiums. It is hoped that non-public healthcare will further play a complementary role, filling the functional gaps in public healthcare amid the increasingly severe population aging.

But three years on, how to fill the void and what value to deliver is no longer merely an option for the development of non-public healthcare—it is an imperative question that must be answered.

During the conference, Yang Huanqiu, founder and chairman of Panorama Medical, stated bluntly, “If we continue to adhere strictly to the evidence-based medicine paradigm of ‘treating only diagnosed diseases,’ then the very existence of non-public healthcare becomes a false premise.” As patient volumes within the public healthcare system begin to decline, the spillover effect can no longer be sustained.

Meanwhile, the rules of the game for medical insurance payment have been fundamentally altered. The core of the DRG/DIP reform is to shift from fee-for-service to bundled payment by disease category. This means that the previous logic of “more services provided, more revenue generated” has been uprooted. If cost control fails, a higher patient volume may instead lead to greater financial losses.

More burdensome still is the persistent crisis of trust weighing on everyone in the industry. The uneven quality of development within the sector remains a Sword of Damocles hanging over private healthcare providers. As hotspots for insurance fraud and deception, some poorly managed private medical institutions have been publicly named and shamed, forcing even those genuinely committed to quality care to bear the same reputational cost. Rebuilding trust will be a long and arduous journey.

Under triple pressure, the path of scale expansion for non-public healthcare has reached its end. The next step for this industry is to find a way to rebuild trust and answer the question: What irreplaceable value can non-public healthcare create for patients, payers, and society?

Although the path ahead remains fraught with challenges, practitioners from various specialized sectors have already identified promising directions during the summit. By synthesizing these exploratory efforts, a central theme is gradually coming into focus.

“The sectors where private healthcare can truly establish a foothold are precisely those that the public system is unable or ill-equipped to handle.” This concise summary was offered by Yang Jianyu, Chairman of USCC Health Technology Development Group, during a roundtable discussion. The term “unable” refers to capital-intensive fields with high technological barriers, such as proton therapy and boron neutron capture therapy. These areas require substantial investment, have long development cycles, and feature high entry thresholds; however, once established, they become the sole providers in their regions, naturally creating competitive moats. The term “ill-equipped” does not imply a lack of capability on the part of public hospitals, but rather reflects constraints imposed by the reality of overwhelming patient volumes and strained resources.

“If a patient can only see a doctor for five minutes, then non-public healthcare will provide a full hour; if only basic diagnosis and treatment are available, then introduce MDT (Multidisciplinary Team) consultations, original drugs and devices, and commercial insurance services. These entry points may seem small, but when explored deeply and thoroughly, they become a moat.”

If identifying the right entry point is a matter of strategic direction, then systematic capability is the key to sustaining that foothold. A consensus emerging from the summit was that private healthcare institutions have historically relied too heavily on isolated advantages—such as acquiring a single piece of top-tier equipment or recruiting a renowned expert—believing this would be sufficient to establish a stable market presence. However, such point-specific advantages are difficult to maintain; true competitive barriers stem from intangible assets that are neither visible nor tangible.

Zhao Kai, Chairman and CEO of Shanghai Jinghua Medical, believes that non-public medical institutions must break free from the passive situation of “revolving around experts” by making genuine efforts to build platform disciplines such as pathology, anesthesiology, and pharmacy. This includes determining how to sub-specialize within these disciplines, implementing multi-tiered review processes for reports, and designing performance evaluation systems that are not simply tied to average health insurance reimbursement rates. These seemingly mundane infrastructure tasks are precisely the foundation of consistent quality.

Yang Huanhuan also stated, “Clients ultimately choose you not because of advertising, but because your inspection compliance rate has consistently been higher than that of competitors. This is not achieved through mere slogans, but by establishing robust systems and making substantial investments in human resources.”

After identifying the right entry point and solidifying their operational systems, private healthcare providers have an even broader horizon: extending their business scope from “diagnosis and treatment” to “health management.” The opportunity lies in addressing gaps in health management that the public healthcare system has historically been unable to cover.

Yang Huanqiu told VCBeat: When individuals are diagnosed with plaques, nodules, or aneurysms, physicians’ recommendations often consist of follow-up observation; however, anxiety tends to persist. Proactively identifying health risks and scientifically managing disease risk—transforming post-discharge rehabilitation and full-cycle health management from fragmented, discontinuous touchpoints into a coherent, closed-loop service—not only addresses a substantial unmet need in the current market but also serves as a core entry point for non-public healthcare providers to build user trust by leveraging their resource-integration advantages. High-quality non-public medical institutions do more than clarify lesions and risks for patients; they integrate premium medical resources, connect patients with appropriate diagnostic and treatment channels, provide systematic health management plans, and establish long-term, dedicated follow-up services.

Thus, the doctor-patient relationship is no longer a simple transaction limited to a single consultation, but rather a long-term entrustment of health grounded in professionalism and peace of mind.

All these explorations must confront a practical constraint: where does the funding come from, and how can costs be controlled? This touches upon the core issue of financial management in non-public healthcare.

Duan Zhengming, Chairman of the Hospital Medical Insurance Professional Committee of the Chinese Hospital Association and former Deputy Director of the Fund Supervision Department of the National Healthcare Security Administration, argues that non-public healthcare operators must clearly calculate the diagnosis-related group (DRG) payment amounts provided by medical insurance, the itemized cumulative costs, and the actual costs. Only with such clarity can they determine where to allocate resources, which disease categories to strengthen, and which to phase out. Performance assessments should not simply impose average medical insurance reimbursement standards on individual physicians; instead, they should encourage the treatment of complex and critical cases and reward genuine cost optimization. Underlying this shift is a management revolution transitioning from extensive to refined practices.

The aforementioned efforts ultimately converge on a single goal: rebuilding trust.

Private healthcare continues to face skepticism today, not due to a lack of technical expertise, but because it has yet to establish stable and perceptible quality delivery. What private healthcare providers must continue to prioritize are quality and differentiation, enabling patients and their families to truly recognize the value of private healthcare and feel respected and valued at every touchpoint.

The years-long joint effort by Ruici Medical and GE Healthcare to conquer non-invasive coronary MRI has demonstrated a model for building such trust. Fang Yixin, Founder, Chairman, and President of Ruici Medical Group, believes that trust is not built through aggressive advertising but earned through every successful delivery. Making pathological diagnosis indispensable and ensuring imaging reports withstand benchmarking against top-tier tertiary hospitals may seem like clichés, yet they represent the scarcest and most powerful competitive barriers in an industry plagued by a profound trust deficit.

Qingshan Qiao Medical Center is also exploring pathways in the realm of high-end health screenings. According to Zhou Mengtao, head of the Qingshan Medical Examination and Medical Research Center, Qingshan Qiao Medical Center has adopted high-end health screenings as its entry point, establishing a unique model centered on “screening-first, medical care-secondary.” Leveraging the robust support of Qingshan Industrial, the center has built a full-lifecycle health closed loop encompassing pre-screening, during-screening, and post-screening phases. The center prioritizes medical quality and patient experience over the sheer volume of services. By introducing advanced, high-end medical equipment and focusing on “precise screening” and “low-dose safety,” it strives to provide society with scarce, premium healthcare products.

These unique characteristics ensure that Qingshan Health Checkup will differ from the existing health examination market in terms of equipment, services, brand, and other dimensions. “We are committed to serving as a robust complement to public hospitals, prioritizing high-quality medical services to give back to society rather than pursuing profit alone, thereby contributing to China’s healthcare reform,” added Zhou Mengtao.

If these explorations are further refined, the future development trends of non-public healthcare can be distilled into three core shifts.

The most fundamental shift is from competition based on scale to competition based on value. In the era of the 15th Five-Year Plan, the narrative of simply competing for beds, equipment, and expansion is no longer sustainable. Payers, patients, and partners all demand genuine cost-effectiveness from non-public healthcare providers. The true value proposition of non-public healthcare lies in delivering high-quality clinical outcomes while optimizing expenditure, providing verifiable clinical results, and offering irreplaceable service experiences.

Accompanying this shift is a transition from isolated competition to ecological symbiosis. After all, future competition will no longer be a solitary struggle between individual hospitals, but a contest between ecosystems. Medical device manufacturers are no longer mere vendors; they have become co-creators deeply engaged in discipline development, operational empowerment, and strategic consulting. AI is no longer just an auxiliary tool; it has become essential infrastructure extending from diagnosis to management, and from efficiency enhancement to experience optimization.

The third shift is moving from treatment endpoints to holistic health management. As concepts like “preventive care” and “chronic disease management” translate into genuine willingness to pay and market demand, the boundaries of private healthcare are being redefined. In-depth health assessments based on imaging, laboratory tests, and multi-omics data, along with AI-driven continuous health management, are emerging as new growth poles attracting high-net-worth individuals and commercial insurance providers.

To align with the future development of non-public healthcare, GE Healthcare also launched the “Value Symbiosis Initiative” in partnership with its partners at this conference. This initiative aims to provide non-public medical institutions with systemic support that was previously difficult to achieve when operating independently, by offering a comprehensive set of predictable, customizable, and sustainable service models, thereby lowering the threshold for access.

At the summit, Dai Hongdong, Vice President of GE Healthcare Greater China and General Manager of its Private Healthcare Business, stated, “We stand at a critical juncture of structural transformation in the private healthcare sector, shifting from ‘resource-driven’ to ‘value-driven’ growth—a systemic paradigm shift. The launch of the ‘Value Alliance: Value Symbiosis Initiative’ represents not only a comprehensive service upgrade but also an innovative iteration of our collaboration model—positioning us as value co-creators with our private healthcare partners to jointly contribute to the ‘Healthy China’ initiative.”

As one of the earliest multinational corporations to deeply cultivate the non-public healthcare sector, GE Healthcare established a dedicated service team in 2010, growing alongside the industry. At the outset of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, policy guidance is promoting standardized development, while cost containment under medical insurance and the acceleration of digital and intelligent infrastructure are reshaping the landscape. Meanwhile, diversified and personalized health demands are opening new opportunities for high-end specialized care, making precision medicine innovation capabilities key to seizing this structural opportunity.

“Going forward, GE Healthcare will leverage the dual-engine drive of global resources and China-based innovation, offering AI-powered precision medicine solutions and full-lifecycle value services to co-create win-win outcomes with private healthcare partners, achieving quality improvement, efficiency gains, and steady growth amid transformation.”