Internet and “tiered health care system” in China:A platform theory perspective / 中国卫生政策研究

ABSTRACT

We explore the difficulty of the possibility of the way to a “tiered health care system” in China. This means that high-end hospitals treat “serious” diseases and community ones and/or individual clinics focus on“non-serious” diseases. The exploration is done using a new theoretical framework in industrial economics, the plat-forms theory. The research achieved three main results which are as followsFirstly, it shows that three main obsta-cles to build a“tiered health care system” comprise the employment relationship between doctors and hospitals, hier-archical hospital system, and positive hospital platform externalities, whose interaction enhance the high-end hospitals to be stronger and community ones to become weaker. Secondly, internet medical platforms will help doctors to leave the high-end public hospitals, build individual clinics, and thus achieve a“tiered health care system”. Finally, the“two-tier structure”, adopted by some internet medical platforms, is a possible way to build the “tiered health care system”, and means a large platform including many small professional platforms on one hand and patients on the other hand.