Medical voucher system in Hong Kong and Macao and its implications to mainland China / 中国卫生政策研究

ABSTRACT

It is important and difficult to establish the market competition mechanism in the health care re-form. Medical voucher system in Hong Kong and Macao can provide policy guidelines for Mainland China to promote institutional innovation, force public hospital reform and the rational allocation of medical and health resources. This paper introduced the origin and development of medical voucher system. Based on the description of the implementa-tion background, similarities and differences and effects of medical voucher system in Hong Kong and Macao, the pa-per found that medical voucher system could help encourage the demander to make more frequent use of medical serv-ices, improve their consciousness of prevention and health care and promote family doctor system. Through analyzing the applicability of medical voucher system in mainland China, the paper pointed out it was consistent with the reform orientation and could be served as a useful supplement to the health care system to improve medical insurance, medi-cal assisstance system as well as an effective measure to develop private medical institutions.