The Development of Chinese Close-Type County Medical Service Communities: Challenges, Dilemmas, and Considerations

There are many problems in the process of building close-type county medical service communities (CMSC) in China. These problems include that most of the CMSC have no obvious characteristics of closeness, the CMSC lack long-term strategic planning; the graded medical system has not been truly implemented; the counterpart assistance has not fundamentally solved the long-standing problems in the primary medical institutions; and it is difficult to change the traditional health concept in a short term. As an expert in counterpart assistance county medical service community, the author has some experience in practice. Through reviewing, reconsidering, and parsing these problems, this paper provides with several suggestions on the sustainable development of CMSC and the promotion of the graded medical system from the aspects of optimizing the top-level design, changing government functions, standardizations in the graded medical system, improving the medical insurance system, and promoting modern health concepts.