State-of-the-art medical complex planned
Shanghai’s Hongqiao Central Business District, with its convenient transportation network, is poised to become a springboard for development throughout the Yangtze River Delta and beyond. Its focus goes beyond traditional commerce to embrace state-of-the-art healthcare.
The city has reinforced the district’s importance by designating it to become an international hub by 2025.
That has opened the door of opportunity to health-related industries eager to take advantage of the district’s many benefits. They include pharmaceutical firms, health equipment manufacturers, international hospitals, and other health-care facilities.
One example is the Shanghai Hongqiao International Medical Center, now under construction. Its complex of multiple services will serve as a creative site for supply-side reforms in healthcare that will extend across the delta and beyond.
Shanghai Hongqiao International Medical Center is about 5.3 kilometers from the Hongqiao transportation hub that offers air, rail, Metro and bus services.
Yang Jie, chairman of Shanghai New Hong Qiao International Medical Center Construction Development Co, ticked off reasons why the location is so ideal.
“It is about 5.3 kilometers as the crow flies from the Hongqiao transportation hub that offers air, rail, Metro and bus services,” he said.
Within an hour’s ride by high-speed rail, many cities in the Yangtze River Delta are easily connected to the Hongqiao area. A three-hour ride takes in more than 70 larger and mid-sized cities and more than 1,000 towns, covering a population of more than 300 million, according to Yang.
The 100-hectare medical center will be built in two phases.
The first phase of the Shanghai Hongqiao International Medical Center will include a facility where labs, imaging, pharmacies and other medical services are shared under one roof. The whole 100-hectare center will be built in two phases.
The city’s health commission has formulated a development plan for the center that will include two international general hospitals, 10 specialty hospitals and various specialized clinics — all privately owned.
These medical facilities, together with the Hongqiao branch of Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, which is a public hospital, will provide about 4,000 hospital beds in total.
Demand for healthcare is rising in Shanghai. The health commission said 38 percent of in-patients in the city’s top-level hospitals were from outside the city last year.
Some 150,000 patient visits were logged at the Hongqiao branch of Huashan Hospital since its opening in June 2018, Yang said. The number of discharged patients topped 11,000, with about half non-residents.
A highlighted project in the medical center blueprint is the Shanghai Luye-Cleveland Clinic Connected Hospital, jointly operated by Luye Medical Group and the Ohio-based Cleveland Clinic.
It will provide a comprehensive range of medical services that include cardiovascular treatment, urinary surgery and tumor surgery.
The joint hospital will be built in two phases. The 1 billion yuan (US$140 million) first phase will open in 2021 or 2022, while the 2-billion-yuan second phase is expected to go into operation at the end of 2024, according to Diao Haipeng, chairman and chief executive of Luye Medical China.
“The Hongqiao International Medical Center will aggregate well-resourced hospitals and clinics from home and abroad,” Yang said. “The center will strive to become the new benchmark in healthcare services in the Yangtze River Delta.”
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Artistic renditions of Shanghai Luye-Cleveland Clinic Connected Hospital, which will be jointly operated by Luye Medical Group and the Ohio-based Cleveland Clinic in the Hongqiao medical center
