Ping An Wanjia Medical Files IPO Prospectus: Empowering Primary Care and Building China's Largest Primary Healthcare Service Alliance

Recently, the 2017 APEC International Conference on General Health was held in Beijing. Themed “Healthy China and Industrial Opportunities,” the conference aimed to extend APEC’s discussions on human health development and showcase frontier explorations in China’s healthcare and pharmaceutical system reforms.

More than 400 leaders from government health departments and industry associations, senior industry experts, and representatives of leading enterprises gathered to discuss the direction of China’s healthcare industry in the new era. Bai Yingjie, Marketing Director of Ping An Wanjia Medical, shared insights on the development of China’s primary healthcare sector at the conference. He stated that in recent years, Ping An Group has positioned its broad healthcare segment as a strategic focus, leveraging its integrated financial strengths and technological advancements to support the growth of the healthcare industry. By attending and participating in the discussions, Ping An Wanjia Medical aims to collaborate with representatives from all sectors to explore opportunities in China’s broader health industry and build an industrial consortium with international influence and distinct Chinese characteristics.

He believes:

1. With the implementation of healthcare reform policies, the gradual promotion of tiered diagnosis and treatment, and the increasing influx of social capital into primary care, the entire primary healthcare sector is experiencing robust growth, with various types of primary medical institutions emerging in large numbers.

2. The development of primary healthcare has objectively increased the supply of social medical services, effectively alleviating the difficulties and high costs associated with accessing medical care for residents; however, many challenges remain to be addressed.

3. Over the next three to five years, primary healthcare will maintain strong growth momentum. Meanwhile, the adoption of new technologies, enhanced informatization, and capital infusion will drive standardization and normalization in primary healthcare, accelerating industry consolidation.

Bai Yingjie further stated that, in the course of transforming primary healthcare and the broader medical industry, Ping An’s various health sectors will orchestrate coordinated industrial development to grow in tandem with the health industry.

Bai Yingjie, Marketing Director of Ping An Wanjia Medical

After the conference, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) conducted an exclusive interview with Bai Yingjie, discussing in detail Ping An Wanjia’s strategy and pathway for its deployment in the primary healthcare sector.

Primary healthcare institutions, known as the "gatekeepers" of residents' health, consist of township health centers, village clinics, private clinics, community health centers, and community health stations.

According to the 2016 Statistical Yearbook of Health and Family Planning, the number of visits to primary healthcare institutions across China reached 4.34 billion in 2015, accounting for 56.4% of the total national healthcare visits. Primary healthcare can be regarded as the most critical component of the healthcare system.

As the most fundamental and critical component, primary healthcare has received significant attention in recent “healthcare reform” policies. For instance, the Notice on the “13th Five-Year Plan” for Deepening the Reform of the Medical and Healthcare System, issued by the State Council on January 9 this year, pointed out that efforts should focus on establishing a basic medical and healthcare system suited to China’s national conditions and improving the medical service delivery system.

The notice also sets forth two development goals: to gradually improve the policy framework for tiered diagnosis and treatment by the end of this year, and to establish a relatively comprehensive public health service system and medical service system by 2020.

This also means that standards will be the focus of primary healthcare development.

For a long time, the tiered accreditation of public hospitals has served as the foundation for government stratified regulation, patient assessment of hospital service capabilities, medical service pricing, and the enhancement of institutional competencies. However, institutions operating in the primary healthcare sector lack accreditation standards and mechanisms comparable to those in the hospital sector. This absence has made it difficult for the government to select designated medical providers, eroded public confidence in primary healthcare institutions, and deprived these institutions of a clear roadmap for continuous improvement and the incentive to deliver high-quality medical care.

Systematic evaluation criteria for primary healthcare institutions have long been absent. In light of this, Ping An Wanjia has prioritized the development of standards for primary healthcare as its key focus area.

Bai Yingjie told VCBeat that Ping An Wanjia, guided by the principle of “international standards, Chinese practice,” collaborated with internationally renowned healthcare quality and safety accreditation organizations such as JCI and DNV GL to launch the Wanjia Accreditation Standards through the introduction of standards, on-site research, and comprehensive restructuring.

Wanjia’s certification standard system is patient-centered, featuring continuous adjustments and improvements across nine domains: clinical care services, patient rights, medication management, ancillary testing, infection control and prevention, facility and equipment management, staff management, quality and safety management, and information and documentation management. It sets requirements for both software and hardware. Notably, this standard does not adopt a one-size-fits-all approach; instead, it implements tiered certification across five dimensions: hardware management, personnel management, operational management, medical quality management, and social impact.

Following the establishment of the standards, a guide and concrete pathway have been provided for the development of primary healthcare institutions. From a market perspective, this also presents an excellent opportunity for Ping An Wanjia to enter the primary healthcare sector.

Overall, the Wanjia Certification Standards provide primary healthcare institutions with opportunities and support to benchmark against international standards and achieve systematic development, empowering them to adopt differentiated pricing strategies. They offer a streamlined pathway for commercial insurance companies to select qualified service providers, assist the government in promoting tiered diagnosis and treatment and enhancing the quality of primary care services, and enable patients to make informed choices rather than selecting clinics blindly, allowing diverse customer segments to easily connect with service providers that offer appropriate pricing and satisfactory care.

Having connected primary healthcare institutions through the establishment of standards, Ping An Wanjia is now focusing on how to enhance their service capabilities, empower primary care, provide greater access to additional capabilities, and expand their commercial potential.

Bai Yingjie told VCBeat that Ping An Wanjia’s services for primary healthcare institutions currently mainly include system platforms, enterprise services, product marketing, Wanjia Talent, medical insurance, and Wanjia Training.

The platform is Wanjia Chain Health Service Platform, which integrates clinics across various regions and specialties, directly serving C-end users by providing health products, clinic appointments, doctor appointments, health information, etc.; meanwhile, it offers a "Cloud Clinic" system to clinics, providing doctors with efficiency tools, patient management, clinical guidance, and more.

Currently, the Ping An Wanjia Health Service Platform has onboarded more than 50,000 clinics, with 12,000 clinics utilizing the Cloud Clinic System.

Ping An Wanjia aims to empower clinics through digitalization, rapidly scale up standardized practices, and strengthen systemic connectivity by providing multi-tiered services.

Furthermore, leveraging its deep expertise in insurance, finance, and healthcare, Ping An Wanjia has also set a strategic direction for primary care clinics in the realm of commercial insurance.

Bai Yingjie stated, “Although similar software and platforms are available in the market, the distinguishing feature of the Ping An Wanjia system is that it is an open platform capable of integrating with insurance services. Leveraging Ping An’s finance-grade secure network and standardized service framework, it constitutes a comprehensive system.”

Bai Yingjie cited as an example that in July this year, Ping An Wanjia launched the “Standardized Clinic Management Service Platform” in Shenzhen. Leveraging a SaaS-based cloud clinic system and adhering to government regulatory requirements and certification standards, the platform enables standardized, digitalized, and routine monitoring of clinics, thereby helping them gain patient trust.

It is conceivable that Ping An Wanjia could explore the integration of commercial insurance with health platforms in the future, serving a dual purpose: driving patient traffic to primary care institutions on one hand, and enabling high-quality primary care providers to become coordinated medical service partners for Ping An Health Insurance on the other.

“Leveraging Ping An Group’s extensive advantages in insurance and health industry systems, Ping An Wanjia has bridged government medical insurance and commercial insurance channels, thereby establishing the offline entry point for managed care services within Ping An’s broader healthcare sector and building a primary healthcare service platform in China,” said Bai Yingjie.

Overall, the transformation of the primary healthcare industry is intensifying, gradually becoming a new hotspot for industrial innovation and investment. Against this backdrop, Ping An Group, leveraging its deep industrial expertise, has focused on primary healthcare and provided a direction for its innovative development through the “Ping An Wanjia” model, which integrates “standards + platforms + services.”