Experience and reference to China's trans-provincial healthcare from European cross-border healthcare management / 中国卫生政策研究

ABSTRACT

With the development of integration process, how to manage citizens' cross-border healthcare be-tween member countries in an organized way has become a major agenda for European Union (EU). Through great efforts over years,a well-functioning mechanism has been established by EU's social health insurance and has been of global interest. It's believed that China's trans-provincial healthcare management can learn a lot from this mechanism. This study aims to provide experiences and reference to China's trans-provincial healthcare management by overview EU's mechanism for cross-border healthcare and then analyzing the differences between China and European Union in terms of object of management,authorization,service institutions,types of healthcare services,and reimbursement of medical insurance in different places. This study suggests that it's necessary for each province to officially introduce relevant policies in order to speed up and facilitate the establishment of trans-provincial healthcare management mech-anism. Moreover,to achieve orderly seeking medical treatment, health insurance agencies should be endowed with approval power to authorize patient trans-provincial application. Meanwhile, the network of health institutions which are entitled to provide services to trans-provincial patients should be expanded. Along with such expansion,and given the lack of understanding on behaviors of health institutions in different provinces for a specific local health insurance agency,it's required that national trans-provincial healthcare management system should take an active role in putting such health institutions under supervision.