160 Health Launches Medical Consortium Product to Support Tiered Diagnosis and Treatment Policy

In April 2017, during an inspection of medical consortium development in Shandong Province, Premier Li Keqiang emphasized the traditional Chinese medicine principle that “free flow ensures no pain.” The goal is to facilitate the vertical integration of high-quality medical resources, leveraging the “connectivity” of medical consortia to alleviate the “pain points” patients experience in accessing healthcare. Alongside the development of traditional medical consortia, internet-enabled “Internet+” medical consortia have also entered a period of rapid expansion.

According to VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat), Health 160, a leading domestic internet-based medical and health service platform, has actively responded to policy calls by launching medical consortium products. Leveraging its extensive experience in internet healthcare operations and platform advantages, it provides referral appointment and consultation services.

Facilitate multi-hospital collaboration, implement tiered diagnosis and treatment, and enable collaborative resource sharing. Break through the bottlenecks of traditional medical consortium formation models, achieve friendly mutual assistance in clinical care, promote joint development through shared scientific research and education, and provide efficient, mobile-based, patient-friendly services, thereby becoming a key driver in the implementation of the tiered diagnosis and treatment system.

By the end of 2016, 205 prefecture-level and above cities across China had launched related initiatives. Guided by the “Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Construction and Development of Medical Consortia” issued by the State Council, these cities have advanced the establishment of medical consortia in light of local conditions. Primarily led by tertiary urban hospitals or hospitals with strong clinical capabilities, medical groups have been formed in collaboration with community health service institutions, nursing homes, and specialized rehabilitation facilities, thereby creating a management model characterized by resource sharing and division of labor through coordinated cooperation.

After a period of practical implementation, drawbacks in the traditional operational model of Medical Consortiums have begun to emerge. These include high connectivity costs, low referral efficiency, inadequate informatization, and limited payment methods. Furthermore, due to long-standing limitations in diagnostic and treatment capabilities as well as medical equipment at primary healthcare institutions, residents lack trust in these facilities, often flocking to tertiary hospitals even for minor ailments like the common cold. In the short term, it is difficult to change residents’ healthcare-seeking habits. Under such circumstances, a phenomenon tends to arise where upward referrals are easy to execute, while downward referrals remain challenging.

It is evident that to address the challenges inherent in traditional medical consortiums, it is essential to first reduce connectivity costs and secondly enhance the efficiency of information exchange among healthcare institutions. In this regard, internet platforms possess inherent advantages.

Taking Health 160 as an example, by the end of 2016, it had connected with more than 3,000 large hospitals across China, covering over 200 cities, and enlisted nearly 500,000 affiliated physicians. Through vertical integration of resources and horizontal cross-regional collaboration, it achieved optimized allocation of medical resources, thereby guiding the public to change their healthcare-seeking concepts and habits and gradually forming an orderly pattern of medical consultations. This approach maximizes the optimized allocation of resources such as talent, equipment, and information. Leveraging its substantial offline medical resources and inherent strengths in internet-based healthcare, the advantages of the Health 160 Internet Medical Consortium are evident.

Furthermore, through the hardware and software systems of the internet, doctors in internet hospitals can break through administrative division restrictions and practice at multiple locations. Meanwhile, patients' imaging data, electronic medical records, health archives, and other information can also be interconnected and shared.

On this basis, by leveraging the open and transparent information display of Health 160, patients can clearly assess the medical expertise of doctors and healthcare institutions, thereby alleviating concerns regarding primary care facilities.