Practice and exploration of the " 1+ 6+ N" medical alliance cooperation system of a hospital in Xinjiang / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

Medical alliances constitute a vertical integration of regional medical resources, and an effective means to promote the tiered medical services. As one of the largest tertiary hospitals in Xinjiang, a hospital has gradually built a " 1+ 6+ N" medical alliance cooperative system fitting the geographical characteristics of Xinjiang since 2018. The system was based on the hospital, made county-level medical institutions as the hub, primary medical and health units as the focus, and telemedicine as the bridge. It turned a telemedicine service platform as the medium, integrating such service segments, as offline practices of experts like clinical teaching, ward rounds, surgical guidance and discipline construction, and as online practices like remote consultation, remote diagnosis, remote education, and remote new technology training among others. Then these segments were integrated into such cooperative models as the remote cooperative medical alliances, specialist-cooperative medical alliances, inter-department co-construction medical alliances, precision-based assistance medical alliances, urban medical group type of medical alliances, and " alliance-consortium" integrated development medical alliances. These practices enabled the expansion and primary support of high-quality medical resources. By June 2022, the hospital had established cooperation via medical alliances with 285 medical institutions at all levels. The implementation of this cooperation mechanism has effectively improved the medical service capacity, diagnosis and treatment capacity of difficult and critical diseases, diagnosis and treatment homogeneity and remote diagnosis capacity in the region, as well as the smooth and orderly progress of the tiered medical services and two-way referrals within a medical alliance.