Chuan Taiyi's Strategic Pivot Post 'Level-8 Policy Storm': Integrating Health Management with Insurance

In the face of the sudden “Eight Measures” and the “Notice on Comprehensive Cleanup,” Chuan Taiyi, exposed by a media outlet, has suddenly found itself at the center of controversy. What VCBeat is most concerned about is: what should be done in the aftermath of the storm?

On March 7, Chuan Taiyi held a press conference to announce its strategic plan for 2016. In fact, this plan had already been formulated at the beginning of the year, focusing on “health management + insurance.”

According to Yuan Guangbo, founder of Chuan Taiyi, on the day the Beijing Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission issued its directive, the Chuan Taiyi app suspended most of its services, except for collaborations with certain private hospitals. “We aim to leverage policy changes to drive our own transformation.” Indeed, users have observed that on the current Chuan Taiyi app, apart from a list of available physicians in pediatric pulmonology, nearly all other departments display the message “No relevant physicians found.”

Yuan Guangbo revealed that as early as mid-2015, around the time of Chuan Taiyi’s Pre-A financing round, the company had already identified “physician studios” as its strategic direction. By the turn of 2016, when Chuan Taiyi completed its Series A financing, this strategic direction had clear objectives, an actionable roadmap, and a detailed implementation plan.

Yuan Guangbo, Founder of Chuan Taiyi

Previously, in November 2015, Chuan Taiyi partnered with an insurance company to develop a health insurance product under the Chuan Taiyi brand, named “Chuan Taiyi Health Insurance.”

Yuan Guangbo stated that the medical services and health management provided by the doctor’s studio are designed to better facilitate post-event claims settlement for health insurance.

Promoting the “Imperial Physician Studio” to Enhance Physicians’ Service Efficiency

Physicians suffer from low work efficiency, as their time is consumed by a large volume of low-value, repetitive tasks, resulting in a waste of valuable medical talent. Many doctors have expressed frustrations such as, “Patients ask endless questions about very simple issues, yet fail to understand even after I explain twice,” “The printer is out of ink, and I have to replace it myself,” and “A significant number of patients become unreachable after leaving the consultation room, leaving me powerless to provide effective post-consultation management.”

Yuan Guangbo believes that to address the insufficient supply of high-quality medical services, it is essential to improve efficiency. According to Chuan Taiyi, the primary approach to significantly enhancing physicians’ work efficiency while aligning with China’s current healthcare landscape is to introduce physician assistants. This enables more refined division of labor, separates low-value tasks, and mobilizes underutilized resources.

In the United States, 100,000 Physician Assistants (PAs) are distributed across private and public hospitals in various states. They all hold graduate degrees and must pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination (PANCE) to obtain professional certification. Under the clinical supervision of physicians, PAs assist with a range of clinical medical tasks, including helping to explain clinical diagnoses, developing treatment plans, and performing specific clinical procedures. The American Academy of Physician Associates provides unified oversight for the 100,000 PAs practicing across all 50 states, while also safeguarding their professional development and providing related services.

In China, physician assistants are already widely prevalent in hospitals in the Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions.

However, in mainland China, physicians do not have their own assistants; instead, nurses, students, or even pharmaceutical representatives are often used to perform assistant duties. In contrast, the ideal scenario envisioned by Chuan Taiyi is as follows: within the same consultation room, renowned physicians focus solely on diagnosing patients’ conditions and prescribing corresponding treatment plans, leaving all remaining tasks to physician assistants.

The Taiyi Studio, jointly organized by Chuan Taiyi and renowned physicians, operates precisely in this manner. Within this virtual physician studio, doctors are supported by assistants with diverse resources, including their own graduate students, family physicians (i.e., primary care physicians), and recent medical graduates who have completed medical training but do not practice as physicians—a group that Chuan Taiyi plans to integrate in the future.

Currently, Chuan Taiyi has established over 100 such Taiyi Studios, with more than 100 expert physicians, over 400 primary care doctors, and more than 100 medical students joining these studios.

In 2016, Chuan Taiyi planned to establish 2,000 Taiyi Studios. Meanwhile, Chuan Taiyi intended to sign agreements with 20 large public tertiary hospitals and 30 high-quality private medical institutions to conduct data collection and big data analysis on 20 single-disease categories characterized by significant research value and a heavy healthcare burden.

Thereafter, the focus of Chuanyi Medical’s work will shift from handling patient inquiries to comprehensive patient management, spanning the pre-consultation, consultation, and post-consultation phases. This transition marks a change from passively relaying informational inquiries to proactively engaging with patients at key nodes throughout the treatment process.

Leveraging Chuan Taiyi Health Insurance as the revenue support

The Taishi Studio’s plan represents a substantial expenditure for Chuan Taiyi.

On one hand, Lu Tao, Co-founder and Vice President of Chuan Taiyi, stated that the Taiyi Studio is, in fact, a vast collaborative system. Currently, Chuan Taiyi has a team of nearly 200 people, with more than half comprising the service team. In 2016, Chuan Taiyi will further invest in a service team of nearly 700 members and an R&D team of close to 100, with total capital investment exceeding RMB 50 million.

Lu Tao, Co-founder and Vice President of Chuan Taiyi

On the other hand, the multi-functional, collaborative, and intelligent clinical workflow support system used by clinical experts is free of charge, and services such as multi-level disease explanations and precise patient education provided to patients are also offered at no cost.

Yuan Guangbo stated that within its extensive collaboration network and completely free service model, Chuan Taiyi will rely on insurance revenues to support the operation of its team’s business.

Although the revenue target for this year was not disclosed, Yuan Guangbo stated that the company plans to enroll 100,000 policyholders in the Chuan Taiyi Health Insurance Program this year to share health risks.

Data shows that in 2015, China had 89 million people living in poverty, half of whom fell back into poverty due to illness. Today, an average annual income of around RMB 300,000 may qualify one as middle class, but a single serious illness can plunge them back below the poverty line. Yuan Guangbo believes, “It is imperative to change this situation; otherwise, the life we strive so hard to earn today could merely be an illusion. We hope to help our 100,000 policyholders served in 2016 escape this ever-present risk. While 100,000 people represent a very small fraction of China’s 1.4 billion population, this is precisely Chuan Taiyi’s goal for 2016.”

In Yuan Guangbo’s view, only when healthcare service providers and payers are unified—namely, through the integration of health management and insurance—can the true essence of health insurance be realized. This model enables a shift from post-event reimbursement to pre-event prevention and in-process intervention, thereby constraining disease incidence, medical quality, and healthcare costs, and aligning the interests of patients, service providers, and payers.

Chuan Taiyi’s inaugural health insurance product, now available for purchase, is a health insurance plan anchored in public hospitals and offering Chuan Taiyi-style end-to-end services. This insurance features zero deductible, with a maximum coverage limit of RMB 200,000, and is priced at approximately RMB 2,000–3,000. Furthermore, the policy is underwritten by a reinsurance company, actuarially assessed by the reinsurer, and filed with the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC).

Yuan Guangbo stated, “Chuan Taiyi is not an insurance company, nor is it one today. Therefore, the products we offer are developed in collaboration with insurance companies. We also have plans to obtain an insurance brokerage license, an online insurance sales license, and ultimately a health insurance license over the next few years; this is all part of our strategic roadmap.”

Editor’s Note from VCBeat: Entrepreneurship is arduous. The sudden policy storm has impacted many mobile health companies, including Chuan Taiyi, forcing them to undergo transformation or adjustment—a process inevitably accompanied by growing pains. Yet, regardless of the chosen path, what entrepreneurship is truly risk-free? The only way forward is to confront problems directly, face challenges with courage, correct mistakes promptly, and persevere in what is right. Recently, VCBeat has received a large volume of inquiries, questions, and submissions. We believe that while there are countless paths in entrepreneurship, each is fraught with difficulties. Therefore, VCBeat is more inclined to encourage entrepreneurs who remain true to their original aspirations and continue to strive forward.

We also welcome entrepreneurs to share their thoughts with us. tg@vcbeat.top.