Recently, ten departments, including the National Health Commission ("NHC"), have jointly issued the Opinions on Promoting the Sustainable, Healthy and Regulated Development of Privately-run Medical Institutions (the "Opinions").
With the focus on deepening the reform of "streamlining administration, delegating powers and strengthening regulation, and improving services", the Opinions propose 22 policy-level measures in six aspects, including increasing government support, simplifying approval services and optimizing supporting policies on medical insurance. Among four measures launched to simplify entry approval services are improving efficiency of the entry examination and approval process, standardizing examination and evaluation, further loosening planning limits, and initiating the pilot program for administration of clinics by record-filing. Specifically, each region is required to release the implementing measures, at the provincial, prefecture and county level, for optimizing the inter-departmental joint examination and approval process for privately-run medical institutions, by the end of 2019; privately-run medical institutions will be backed and encouraged to get engaged in reviews for hospital grading; the government will place no planning restrictions over the total number of privately-run medical institutions in a region and over their spatial distribution; and the pilot program on administration of clinics by record-filing will be initiated in ten cities, including Beijing.