New policy makes health care more convenient
Residents in Shanghai’s Qingpu District, Jiashan in Zhejiang Province and Wujiang in Jiangsu Province will enjoy more convenient medical services after a new health-care policy came into effect on Monday.
Shanghai’s Healthcare Security Administration said patients from these places — the Yangtze River Delta region integration demonstration zone — can now use their medical insurance cards directly to seek outpatient and emergency services and pay related costs in any of 85 designated hospitals in the zone, even if the hospitals are non-local. If they need to be hospitalized, the hospitals will guide them through a convenient registration process.
Previously, patients needed to register their cards at local health care security administrations for cross-provincial medical services before visiting non-local hospitals or pay the costs themselves first and apply for reimbursement afterward.
For example, if a Jiashan resident fell sick in Qingpu, the patient could not use their medical insurance card at a Qingpu hospital directly without having registered for cross-provincial medical services in advance. The patient would need to pay the costs first and apply for reimbursement after returning to Jiashan.
Now, the patient can use the medical insurance card directly at a designated hospital in Qingpu and pay part of the costs with the insurance account according to the insurance policy, thus making the service really convenient.
Integration of the health-care system is an important part of the integration of the Yangtze River Delta region, a national development strategy.
With the efforts of the governments of Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, almost all major hospitals in 41 cities in the region now accept direct payment with non-local patients’ medical insurance cards as long as they have registered at local health care security administrations.
These included 85 hospitals in Qingpu, Jiashan and Wujiang, and they are now taking a lead to make the process more convenient by allowing non-local patients to enjoy and pay for outpatient and emergency medical services with their medical insurance cards without registration, as they do at their local hospitals.
The demonstration zone has also unified handling of a first batch of nine medical insurance related services, including individual medical insurance information inquiries, issuing of insurance certificates and insurance transformation, to make work more efficient.
When making services more convenient for the insured, the demonstration area has also established a supervision scheme for the joint review and mutual inspection of cross-provincial medical costs to ensure security of the medical insurance fund.