MoH to improve medical data sharing among hospitals
Shanghai. July 2. INTERFAX-CHINA - The Ministry of Health (MoH) outlined plans to set up provincial centers to monitor medical services and improve hospitals' access to medical data in adocumentissued July 2.
In the document, the MoH encouraged provincial health departments to set up monitoringcenters for eachclinical departmentby the end of 2012.The centers will monitor the performance of hospitals, set up databases and define standardmedical procedures.
Provincial health departments must select data from high-cost medical examination procedures which offer stable long-term results to start building the database.
The database will likely initially involve provincial-level hospitals. The document stipulated thatdata from ordinary clinical examinations and medical imaging should be shared amonghospitals of the same grade by the end of 2010.
"Data from certain medical procedures can be shared among some hospitals of the same level at present. The new measures will help encourage the practice," an employee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine,surnamed Feng,told Interfax on July 2.
Last month, Yunnan health department announced that 11 grade three hospitals wouldshare data from some medical examination procedures,becoming the first hospitals in the provinceto do so. The practice willgraduallybe extended to all hospitals in the province of grade two and above.
The document said that the MoH would consider the possibility of setting up a national system for sharing medical examination data.
- KZ