Spring Rain Doctor Expands into Offline Clinics with O+O Healthcare Model

On May 7, 2015, Chunyu Yisheng announced the opening of 25 offline clinics across five key cities in China. Chunyu will invite chief physicians from Grade 3A hospitals to provide consultations at these offline clinics and offer private doctor services that integrate online and offline care, thereby creating an “online + offline” end-to-end medical experience.

The first batch of 25 Spring Rain Clinics has been established in five cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Wuhan. According to Zhang Rui, CEO of Spring Rain Doctor, the company plans to open an additional 300 clinics across 50 large and medium-sized cities nationwide by the end of 2015. Spring Rain will invite chief physicians from Grade 3A hospitals to provide consultations at its clinics. It adopts an annual fee model for “online + offline” private physician services, with no extra charges for diagnoses, and supports medical insurance reimbursement for certain medications.

As in the past, Zhang Rui, driven by revolution and ideals, has once again launched a disruptive innovation for Spring Rain. Naturally, such innovation has sparked considerable controversy. Members of the VCBeat startup community have also engaged in lively discussions about Spring Rain’s offline clinics. Let us first examine Spring Rain’s own perspective, followed by the commentary from the VCBeat community.

Chunyu Doctor currently handles over 80,000 online consultations per day. More than 70% of these inquiries are resolved quickly, while nearly 30% require further offline management. By establishing offline clinics, Chunyu aims to fully integrate offline medical services—including examinations, prescription dispensing, surgeries, and hospitalization—into its service ecosystem. This initiative aligns with the “service-oriented e-commerce” model announced by Chunyu in February this year, reflecting its commitment to meeting users’ healthcare needs at every stage, whether through the procurement of health products or care provided at its offline clinics.



First, each user will be assigned an online personal physician to help establish an Electronic Health Record (EHR) and monitor daily physiological data in real time. When experiencing discomfort, users can consult their personal physician at any time to receive a treatment plan. The condition may be resolved and recovery achieved through online consultation alone; alternatively, the physician may recommend in-person medical care. In such cases, the personal physician can facilitate a referral to a Spring Rain Clinic, where diagnosis and treatment are completed at the physical facility. The offline physician will then resume online communication with the patient to ensure continuous follow-up until full recovery is achieved.













The private physician service, currently referred to as "2B," primarily serves two types of clients. The first category comprises large enterprises with the financial capacity to purchase employee benefits. If a company purchases this product for its staff, it is equivalent to providing each employee’s household with a dedicated private physician who manages the health and well-being of the entire family. This allows employees to focus wholeheartedly on their work without distraction, creating a mutually beneficial arrangement for both the employer and the employees. Therefore, the primary target customer group should be companies willing to offer enhanced benefits to their workforce.

Furthermore, Spring Rain provides customer service solutions for its corporate clients. For instance, partner companies such as Yili can offer private physician services as a value-added benefit to their premium customers. Similarly, in the automotive sector, 4S dealerships can purchase private physician products to offer as complimentary perks to consumers. Across various industries—including real estate, finance, and insurance—health is the most precious asset. Gifting health to customers delivers the priceless value they truly need. Reportedly, Spring Rain’s “Private Physician” service generated over RMB 20 million in revenue within just one week of its launch.

Furthermore, Chunyu will launch a B2C personal physician version in the future. The product form will also undergo changes. The B2C personal physician can provide more personalized services for specific customer segments, such as prenatal care physicians for women and pediatricians for infants, catering to different medical conditions. The B2C model focuses more on providing solutions, as users purchase these personal physician services directly. It may offer tailored solutions involving physicians from various specialties to meet the unique needs of different users, thereby establishing a direct connection between end consumers and physicians.





China currently has over 900,000 primary healthcare institutions. So why is Chunyu still establishing clinics? The reason likely lies in the low efficiency of these existing institutions, their lack of incentive mechanisms for physicians, and their inability to motivate staff. If a physician can earn an annual income of RMB 600,000 at Chunyu, they may choose to leave public hospitals and become a full-time physician with Chunyu. This is clearly highly attractive to physicians who are constrained by the hospital system.

All physicians at Spring Rain Clinic are engaged through online contracts. To date, the platform has contracted 100,000 attending physicians and above from Tier-2 Grade-A hospitals and higher across China. These physicians practice at multiple sites or operate as independent practitioners, forming an external circulation system within the Spring Rain ecosystem. Patients are a natural extension of the app’s user base, with their healthcare needs seamlessly transitioning to offline services.





Looking to the future, Zhang Rui stated that the company plans to introduce advanced American management models and may eventually establish its own hospitals. Next year, Chunyu (Spring Rain) may invest in building offline experience centers or hire its own physicians; however, the majority of its services will continue to be delivered through an internet-based crowdsourcing model. From leasing and managed services to self-built hospitals, Chunyu’s strategic roadmap appears to be increasingly clear. By initially collaborating with community clinics and private hospitals, and later establishing its own branded medical facilities, Chunyu is transitioning from optimizing resource integration to creating its own resources, carving out its own unique path.

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·The National Health and Family Planning Commission has long advocated for “channeling high-quality medical resources down to the grassroots level.” Once this trend becomes firmly established outside the public system, will the public sector follow suit? In that case, would the goal be considered achieved when physicians from doctor studios or Spring Rain Clinics, among others, extend their services to the hundreds of thousands of community health service centers, community health service stations, township health centers, and village clinics?

·Aren’t we overthinking it? The driving force behind everyone’s interest in participating in mobile health or private healthcare is that the medical market is enormous. Currently valued at RMB 3.5 trillion in China, and drawing on Western healthcare expenditure as a benchmark, it has the potential to expand to RMB 8–20 trillion in the future. All that remains is for players to strive to carve out their share or grow the overall market.

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·Spring Rain has bolstered its offline services, establishing a preliminary closed loop for its private doctor offerings. This enables the company to sell private doctor services as employee benefits to enterprises and collaborate with insurance companies to offer health insurance products bundled with private doctor services. These initiatives are expected to boost revenue in the short term and transform the traditionally weak doctor-patient relationship into a stronger one. Meanwhile, Ping An is developing its “Famous Doctor Clinic” service, and Guahao.com is building expert medical teams. Spring Rain is also exploring similar strategies; if successful, its valuation could increase by an order of magnitude.

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·Running one’s own clinic offers many tangible, implementable assets. Due to performance management issues, grassroots medical institutions provide virtually no incentives for primary care physicians. As these institutions are government-owned rather than privately operated, primary care physicians still effectively receive equal pay regardless of performance—a “big pot” system. Under such conditions, it is difficult for grassroots medical institutions to achieve substantial development. Presumably for this reason, many individuals are eager to take matters into their own hands and establish offline, community-based physical clinics, as they can no longer afford to wait for government-led reforms.

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·Why do I feel like everyone is opening hospitals? As the patient volume grows, so do the emerging issues. Chunyu’s business model is too vague, with certain detailed problems left unresolved. The framework is in place, yet simple matters have been unnecessarily complicated. By competing with hospitals for patients while also hiring renowned physicians from those very hospitals to provide consultations, I believe the hospitals are unlikely to be pleased.

Addressing the challenges faced by private clinics is actually straightforward, as ready-made resources are available. In my view, the essence of mobile healthcare lies in facilitating patient access, improving the medical care environment, optimizing the utilization of medical resources, and reducing healthcare costs. The key focus should be on developing community health centers. The government has consistently emphasized that chronic disease management should be delegated to community-level facilities, discouraging patients from seeking care at large hospitals for all conditions, which wastes medical resources. However, patients are reluctant to visit community health centers due to perceptions of low reputation, limited resources, and inferior quality of care. A viable solution would be to implement programs featuring renowned specialists practicing in community settings or conducting regular consultations there. This involves partnering with the nearest tertiary hospital to establish a "green channel" for seamless referrals between the hospital and the community—a model long advocated by the state to maximize resource efficiency. Minor ailments can be treated locally at community centers with follow-up monitoring. Given that community health centers are typically located within residential neighborhoods, they benefit from high patient stickiness and convenience, saving patients transportation costs. Furthermore, this model creates opportunities for third-party companies to develop profitable services such as patient education and private nursing. It also alleviates the burden on large hospitals, benefiting both the nation and its citizens. I believe mobile healthcare should aim to share the workload of large hospitals rather than replace them.

In my view, it is better to address one issue at a time. Medical diagnosis and treatment cannot be rushed, as they involve a special population. Although community health centers are state-owned, their physicians often operate under an egalitarian compensation system (“eating from the same big pot”), which dampens their motivation. Inviting renowned specialists to conduct consultations at these centers is entirely different from reforming this entrenched compensation structure. Therefore, I am unclear about Spring Rain’s objectives: Is the goal to fully leverage the resources of renowned specialists, to develop private hospitals, or something else? Regardless of how slowly community healthcare reform progresses, the government will not abandon community hospitals. From the perspectives of administrative functions and urban planning, community hospitals play a vital role. I have participated in initiatives that bring renowned specialists to grassroots levels, and I found that directors of township health centers and community hospitals were highly motivated. Before departing, they urged us to organize more such activities. Who says their service is poor? Compared with medical staff at large tertiary hospitals, they often have more time and patience; their main limitation lies in poor conditions and insufficient funding for improvement. This is merely my personal opinion: Developing internet-based healthcare requires not only the boundless creativity typical of internet professionals but also the rigor and meticulousness inherent to medical practitioners. Medical care cannot rely on speculation, given the unique nature of the patient population. Just my two cents.

Special thanks to VCBeat community members: Du Junxuan, Zhu Yudong, Zhang Jianhua (Health Consultant), Zhou Kechen, Deng Rende, Sun Hongtao, Li Hao, Da Ya, Liu Feng, Yong Zheng, Youpay’s Shen Youpei, sunxi, Ke Guoning, Maomi Daguduer’s Zhu Yue, Nan Man, and others for their insightful contributions. Friends who wish to join the VCBeat VB Entrepreneurship Circle are welcome to follow the VCBeat WeChat official account (vcbeat) and leave a message.