Lessons from the East: China's Rapidly Evolving Health Care System (NEJM, 2015)

In this study The Commonwealth Fund’s David Blumenthal and coauthor William Hsiao of the Harvard School of Public Health identify important insights from China’s radical health system experimentation. Among others:

• In low-income countries—and perhaps in high-income ones as well—community health workers, like China’s barefoot doctors, can significantly improve the health status of local populations.
• Relying on pure market forces to fund and distribute health care can put a heavy financial burden on patients and can lead to social instability.
• One legacy of China’s market experiment is a widespread perception that physicians put their economic welfare ahead of patients’ interests. This has complicated China’s efforts to create a health care workforce that leaders and the public trust. Physician professionalism may be an underappreciated element of effective modern health care systems, the authors note.