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China's Economic and Social Progress over the Past 50 Years Has Outpaced Its Health Care System

• The health of China's population is being influenced simultaneously by its rapid rate of aging, growing wealth, and migration from rural to urban living, as well as by greater reliance on food of low nutritional value and decreased physical activity.
• The result is an expanding burden of chronic disease and disability, even as mortality due to acute illness wanes.

The Current System Has Several Handicaps

• China faces a severe workforce shortage, especially of nurses.
• There is overreliance on hospital-based care.
• Health information technology is not up to date.
• While the central government is investing substantial resources, the limited absorptive capacity of the current system makes it difficult to expand capacity fast enough to meet expected demand, at least with traditional delivery models.

This Challenge Can Be Made into an Opportunity

• Health care can be restructured as a cornerstone of a knowledge-based economy.
• Access to high-quality and affordable health care can stimulate domestic consumption by unlocking household savings set aside for health care expenditures.
• Successful adoption of an innovative and sustainable system will enable China to export health system development capabilities.
• China does not face the same entrenched interests and obstacles that other nations do in creating an innovative health care system.

Western Models Offer Cautionary Lessons for China

• Western countries do not invest sufficiently in interoperable information technology.
• Countries do not engage in significant performance monitoring and improvement.
• Incentives for physicians are not aligned with desired outcomes, resulting in ineffective and inefficient health care delivery systems.
• Consumers are not sufficiently engaged in their own care.