The National Health Commission ("NHC") has recently issued the Circular on Issuing the Measures for Health Departments to Address the Prominent Issue of Formalism to Ease Burden at the Grassroots Level (the "Circular").
With a view to reducing burden on grassroots institutions and medical staff, the Circular outlines 19 measures in five aspects which are standardizing such activities as supervisory checks, inspections, assessment and surveys, collecting materials in a centralized manner, ramping up information management, simplifying conference documents, and lifting unreasonable burden on medical staff. Further, the Circular calls for adopting the plan-based management of supervisory checks, inspections and assessment, and inspecting, assessing and evaluating medical care and healthcare institutions, adding that no advance notices will be issued, so as to straightly look at everyday work of medical care and healthcare institutions. Also, measures aimed at improving the integration of systems, regulating data collection and highlighting information sharing, are launched for better information management. Furthermore, the Circular stresses that methods adopted to evaluate and assess clinical medical personnel will be improved, requiring that when it comes to promotion and performance assessment, medical staff shall be assessed differently by category. Remote continuing medical education should be offered as much as possible under the "Internet Plus" mode, such as in the form of massive open online courses (MOOC) or micro courses. Additionally, contractual services from family doctors need to be improved.