Chunyu Doctor Files IPO Prospectus: Pioneering Integrated Online-Offline Clinics with Public Community Health Centers

On March 5, Spring Rain Doctor partnered with the Qiaokou District Health and Family Planning Commission of Wuhan to establish a Spring Rain Clinic at the Ronghua Street Community Health Service Center in Qiaokou District, Wuhan. This marks the first offline clinic opened by a mobile healthcare company in Wuhan. The clinic differs fundamentally from those Spring Rain partnered with last year. The medical institutions that entered into cooperative agreements with Spring Rain clinics last year were primarily private hospitals, which inevitably led to external perceptions that they served as a patient-referral channel for “Putian-system” hospitals.

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5It is reported that Spring Rain has signed cooperation agreements with seven community health service centers in Qiaokou District, and implementation will be rolled out gradually. In Wuhan, in addition to the clinic officially opened on that day, another Spring Rain clinic, operated in partnership with Deyou Traditional Chinese Medicine, is located in Optics Valley and is currently in a trial operation phase. Spring Rain plans to have 15 and 10 Spring Rain clinics in regular operation through cooperative models in Beijing and Wuhan, respectively, by the end of June.

This article analyzes the model of collaboration between Spring Rain and private hospitals to establish clinics. In this partnership model, the ideal scenario for Spring Rain Clinics is for Spring Rain to provide patient and physician resources, while utilizing the partner hospitals’ offline premises and diagnostic equipment free of charge, with medical expenses reimbursable through national health insurance. The challenges preventing Spring Rain Clinics from achieving their expected goals are threefold: first, it is difficult to convert the substantial online traffic into offline visits; second, the collaborative model exerts limited control over the clinics, making it hard to standardize the patient care experience; and third, most partner hospitals are private institutions, where facilitating health insurance reimbursement proves difficult.

The underlying reason is that online users are dispersed across China with diverse healthcare needs, whereas offline clinics are constrained by geographical limitations. Currently, patients’ first choice for medical care remains public Grade 3A hospitals, making it difficult for Chunyu Clinics, which lack brand recognition, to gain patient trust. On the other hand, Chunyu aimed to achieve cost control through its offline clinics to facilitate integration with insurance providers. However, the collaborative model with private hospitals left Chunyu with limited influence over clinic operations, making it hard to ensure a consistent patient experience and thus failing to achieve cost-control objectives. As a result, the majority of the 300 clinics contracted by Chunyu last year are not actually in operation.



Let us first examine the challenge of patient traffic. Chunyu Doctor has already verified that only a small fraction of its 91 million online platform users are likely to become patients at its offline clinics. The existing patient flow at Community Health Service Centers represents Chunyu Doctor’s potential user base. Affiliation with Community Health Service Centers provides strong brand endorsement for Chunyu Clinics. If patients have a positive experience during their initial visit and return rates are high, Chunyu Clinics can gradually build brand equity and expand its user base.



According to the head of Spring Rain Clinic’s Wuhan operations, community health centers primarily manage common, frequently occurring, and chronic diseases, with limited technical capabilities. Cases beyond their scope can be referred to Spring Rain Clinic, where specialists from tertiary Grade A hospitals provide diagnosis and treatment. This arrangement enhances the patient experience at the community level, increases patient loyalty, and consequently drives an increase in outpatient visits.

Furthermore, in addition to providing direct outpatient consultations and other services to patients, tertiary-grade hospital physicians at Spring Rain Clinic will conduct professional training and provide clinical mentorship for medical staff at community health service centers, thereby helping to elevate the standard of care at these grassroots facilities. In fact, existing medical consortium models also stipulate that tertiary hospitals should establish supportive partnerships with primary care institutions, requiring physicians to make regular visits to grassroots levels; however, due to a lack of sufficient incentives, physicians from tertiary hospitals generally lack the motivation to engage in such activities. Spring Rain Clinic has resolved this challenge.



Third, with a specific focus on the patient care experience, Spring Rain has specially renovated its consultation rooms, arranged waiting areas, and established detailed clinical protocols to guarantee 30-minute consultation sessions. It also provides patients with electronic medical records and health profiles accessible via its mobile app. Leveraging the community center’s affordable care system, Spring Rain Clinic enables visiting patients to receive quality treatment at minimal medical expense.

Spring Rain does not rule out collaboration with private hospitals, but it maintains strict criteria for selecting such partners and binds both parties through contractual agreements. For instance, hospitals are prohibited from interfering with the independent prescribing authority of Spring Rain physicians, from establishing any financial interests with doctors, and are required to keep patient consultation costs under control as much as possible. Additionally, Spring Rain aims to avoid becoming a platform that merely drives patient traffic to private hospitals.



Notably, the consultation fees at Spring Rain Clinic are set by physicians from tertiary hospitals based on their professional expertise. “We leave pricing entirely to the market; the number of patients determines whether the fee structure established by physicians is reasonable,” said the aforementioned representative of Spring Rain Clinic. The offline clinics serve as a platform for physicians’ multi-site practice or, in other words, as their offline studios. “Spring Rain Clinic integrates underutilized resources from private hospitals and communities, leveraging specialists’ spare time to create incremental medical resource capacity.”



At the Ronghua Street Community Health Service Center, Chunyu has also installed an all-in-one health kiosk, offering free access to patients visiting for consultations. This integrated device meets the needs of routine outpatient examinations, such as blood pressure, blood glucose, and electrocardiogram (ECG) testing. The collected data is automatically uploaded to a cloud platform and will later be integrated with the Chunyu Doctor platform, providing data support for physicians in managing patient health. This initiative serves as an early strategy by Chunyu to attract nearby patients with chronic diseases and acts as a data entry point for establishing personal health records.





According to VCBeat, if the collaboration between Spring Rain Clinic and community health centers continues to deepen, it is not ruled out that they will jointly establish health record management systems for residents in partnership with Community Health Service Centers. In addition to individual consumers (C-end users), Spring Rain Clinic’s target user base includes more corporate clients (B-end users) and insurance policyholders. These users require not only online private physician services but also offline medical consultations.





To establish a solid foundation, Spring Rain Clinic needs to make efforts in the following aspects: First, although Spring Rain’s offline clinics are staffed with high-end talent, their facilities and equipment are limited and cannot fully meet patients’ medical needs. By establishing effective coordination with local Grade A tertiary hospitals and creating a green channel for patient referrals and transfers, Spring Rain can alleviate patients’ concerns. Second, to stabilize its physician workforce, relying solely on contractual agreements is insufficient; it is also necessary to secure support from the hospitals where these physicians are primarily employed. To achieve these two objectives, Spring Rain could establish co-construction partnerships with the Grade A tertiary hospitals affiliated with its contracted physicians, thereby realizing a degree of shared responsibility and benefit-sharing. If such a framework is established, it will not only strengthen the foundation of the offline clinics but also allow patients referred or transferred to the corresponding Grade A tertiary hospitals to continue seeing the same attending physician, thereby making treatment more convenient for patients.



Furthermore, under the guidance and supervision of the local Health and Family Planning Commission, Chunyu can gradually integrate with local community hospitals. Some commentators argue that collaborating with the Health and Family Planning Commission demonstrates Chunyu Clinic’s commitment to public welfare. If the Commission leverages this momentum to facilitate a partnership between local community hospitals and Chunyu Clinic, the two entities could adopt a cooperative model characterized by “two brands, one team.” This approach would preserve Chunyu Clinic’s distinctive features while fulfilling the operational responsibilities of community hospitals. Regarding the mode of cooperation, a joint-stock structure should be the preferred option: community hospitals could contribute assets such as premises and equipment as equity, while Chunyu Clinic could contribute capital and technical expertise, thereby achieving complementary advantages.

Tiered diagnosis and treatment is the focus of this year's healthcare reform, and Wuhan has always been at the forefront of implementing this system. Not long ago, Jointown Pharmaceutical Group, Alibaba Health, and Wuhan Central Hospital collaborated to launch an online hospital, extending their reach to township health centers and village clinics. VCBeat believes that Wuhan's active and beneficial experiments with the tiered diagnosis and treatment model will become a trend.