World Hospitals and Health Services - International Hospital ...

POLICY: CHINESE HEALTHCARE TRENDS
Figure 14: How did you hear about the hospital or clinic of your choice (%)?
Figure 15: Annual expenditure on healthcare (Health Insurance Premium
Excluded, (%)
transparency.
Finally, consumer’s preference on a hospital communication
channel was assessed. Across the board,
friends and family recommendation and personal
experience were listed as the top two sources for reliable
hospital information as opposed to media or
advertisements.
However, unlike other cities, 60.0% of the Beijing
residents do not feel that hospitals should market
themselves like other industries. When asked why,
91.4% felt hospital marketing is inappropriate, as
hospitals should focus their efforts on medical matters.
On the other hand, 67.7% of the Shanghai residents can
accept hospital marketing efforts. Of the percentage that
does not accept, 40.5% considered the credibility of
advertisements to be low. Chengdu’s healthcare
industry relies the greatest on media as 25.5% of the
respondents learned about their hospital of choice from
the media. However, the most prevalent reason for
provider choice is still friends and family
recommendation (78.4%) and previous personal
experience (65.7%).
Figure 16: Willingness-to-pay: better services
and Surroundings (%)
Willingness-to-pay (WTP)
Willingness-to-pay (WTP), as a measurement
of medical services values, is used in this study
to outline the financial and behavioural
boundaries of the middle class when seeking
health care. On the average, the survey
benchmarked that a typical Chinese middle
class consumer spends $500 annually on
healthcare.
To seek care outside of one’s insurance
network would indicate an increase in out-ofpocket
expenditure. Results from Shanghai and
Chengdu indicate that for better services
(especially complicated cases); consumers are willing to pay
more for their care. Consumers are also willing to pay more
Figure 17: WTP better services and surroundings: Shanghai (%)
18 | World Hospitals and Health Services | Vol. 44 No. 4