Chinanews client, Beijing, July 26 (Reporter Zhang Ni) Are you still in line for a few hours to go to the hospital for a visit? This medical experience that many people take for granted may undergo subversive changes in the future.
In recent days, a series of policies favorable to Internet medical care have been introduced. In the future, not only can you get medical treatment and medicines online, but you can even get medical insurance reimbursement directly. However, to move the diagnosis and treatment process related to people's lives and health to the Internet, "online medical treatment" is convenient and efficient, but also requires clarification of responsibilities and strengthened supervision.
Data map: Medical staff are answering questions online. Photo by Fang Yongle
Doctors " grab orders " for consultation online , will the traditional model of medical treatment be subverted?
"In 10 minutes, 230,000 doctors grabbed the order." This is the information displayed on the homepage of an Internet medical platform App.
Reporters experience online registration and consultation on the platform. They only need a few yuan for registration fees. They submit medical descriptions and past diagnosis and treatment receipts through the platform. In less than three minutes, they can be matched with a deputy chief physician to receive consultation and conduct online real-time consultation. Exchange consultation.
For many patients who have experienced traditional medical treatments such as difficulty in registering and queuing, the convenience and efficiency of online medical treatment is obvious.
In fact, at the beginning of this year, due to the epidemic, the diagnosis and treatment activities of most hospitals were affected, and contactless diagnosis and treatment became a rigid demand. During that special period, the market also gave birth to urgent expectations for Internet medical treatment.
Data disclosed by the National Health Commission in March this year showed that during the epidemic, Internet diagnosis and treatment became an important part of medical services. The number of Internet diagnosis and treatment in hospitals under the management of the National Health Commission increased 17 times compared with the same period last year.
In recent days, the release of two blockbuster documents has released more policy signals.
On July 15, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 13 departments jointly issued the "Opinions on Supporting the Healthy Development of New Business Forms and New Models, Activating the Consumer Market and Encouraging Employment Expansion", which proposed that eligible "Internet +" medical service costs should be included in medical insurance payments Scope; standardize and promote the models of chronic disease online follow-up diagnosis, telemedicine, and Internet health consultation.
Immediately afterwards, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Implementation Opinions on Further Optimizing the Business Environment and Better Serving Market Entities", again referring to the issue of "relaxation" of medical insurance policies.
"Under the premise of ensuring medical safety and quality, further relax the scope of Internet diagnosis and treatment, include qualified Internet medical services into the scope of medical insurance reimbursement, formulate and publish a unified national Internet medical approval standard, accelerate the review and approval of innovative medical devices, and promote clinical applications ."
Continuous policy signals have made public opinion hotly debated: "Internet medical treatment", whether this new format will change people's lifestyles in the near future, and at the same time, put medical treatment that is related to life and health "online" , How to make the people comfortable and at ease?
Data map: Medical staff are answering questions online. Photo by Fang Yongle
Is it reliable to move to the Internet for medical treatment?
For some elderly people or patients with chronic diseases who often go to the hospital, "queuing for 3 hours and 5 minutes to see a doctor" is a common experience. In sharp contrast with offline consultation, the time cost of online consultation has been greatly reduced.
When a reporter experienced online medical treatment on a certain platform, it took less than 20 minutes for the whole process from registration to submission of medical records, to doctor's consultation, prescription, prescription review, and order purchase. Patients can receive the drugs sent by the platform express without leaving home.
In the opinion of industry experts, patients’ follow-up purchase of medicines through Internet hospitals can effectively solve the problem of patients’ “seeing for medicines”, while reducing the number of patients coming to the hospital, alleviating the pressure on the hospital’s outpatient clinics, releasing more medical resources, and improving patients’ medical treatment. Sense of gain.
However, unlike other industries, the medical industry has extremely high requirements for safety. But the reality is that some chaos still exists in some Internet medical platforms. Prior to this, some media reported that doctors can prescribe prescriptions online in seconds, send medicines by uploading pictures, and supplement prescriptions online.
When the reporter consulted in an offline pharmacy, a staff member said that when purchasing antibiotics prescription drugs, in addition to showing the effective prescription issued by the medical institution within three days, you can also log in to the online consultation platform designated by the pharmacy, and the doctor will issue an online prescription After purchase.
However, the reporter noticed that although online platforms require patients to submit their ID numbers for real-name authentication, and doctors will conduct face-to-face consultations and inquire about allergy history with patients, the platform does not require patients to provide past examination results or medical records. This will undoubtedly bring some potential risks.
"At this stage, there are still many areas that need to be regulated in Internet medical care." Ma Guanglei, deputy secretary-general of the China Pharmaceutical Business Association and general manager of Yi Fudi, said in an interview with a reporter from Chinanews.com.
He said that in recent years, the state has issued a series of policies to regulate Internet medical care, from the release of three documents including the "Internet Diagnosis and Treatment Management Measures (Trial)" in 2018, to the release of the "Hospital Smart Service Classification and Evaluation Standard System (Trial)". When the medical insurance policy is "relaxed", the policies and regulations are in the same line, and the guidance is orderly and coherent, but the industry still needs further regulation.
In Ma Guanglei’s view, some Internet hospitals conduct the first diagnosis online, “complement prescriptions” online, or make some diagnoses without directly receiving inspection reports and other materials, which makes it difficult to ensure the safety and reliability of the diagnosis. If it is not restricted, some Internet hospitals will excessively expand their service coverage, which will inevitably bring risks. While harming the health of patients, it is also not conducive to industry development.
Data map: A patient uses the face recognition system to make an appointment with an expert number under guidance. Photo by Wang Guangzhao
To explore the advanced Internet medical care, supervision must keep up
Looking back at the development of Internet healthcare in China, the industry generally regards 2014 as the "first year of Internet healthcare." In the following years, a large number of start-up companies also aimed at this field, and various platforms appeared one after another. The "spring" and "outreach" of the industry seemed to have come.
However, with the development of the industry and the gradual regulation of policies, and the inability of some platforms to find mature monetization models, the industry has undergone several reshuffles in the past few years.
Today, the platforms that patients can access mainly include Internet hospital online services led by various medical institutions, or third-party Internet medical platforms.
As a new business format, various platforms are constantly exploring and moving forward in practice.
Ma Guanglei believes that the level of Internet medical care is also constantly developing. In the past, some platforms only stayed at the simple service level such as appointment registration. Now they have expanded to the medical level, such as online prescription drugs, online consultations, and so on. As the scope of services continues to expand, regulations and follow-up supervision must be followed up in time.
Taking online prescription drugs as an example, in his view, selling drugs by prescription is the basic logic, and the most important thing is to solve the problem of the flow of real prescriptions and the traceability in the flow process. One of the important ways is to build a prescription circulation platform. By connecting to the prescriptions of medical institutions, a unified standard prescription library is established to form a whole-process traceable prescription circulation mechanism to meet the regulatory requirements of government departments.
Wang Hang, president of Good Doctor Online, also said earlier that public hospitals are actively launching Internet hospitals, which means that the main body of the domestic medical service system has begun to embrace the Internet. Public hospitals and Internet medical platforms have their own strengths, and both parties have their own shortcomings. We should be optimistic about and expect the two to form a joint force in the future.
Data map: Intelligent robots are working in the First People's Hospital of Yinchuan City. Photo by Yang Di
In the future, what kind of services will patients pay for?
The National Health Commission previously published the "Statistical Bulletin on the Development of my country's Health Care Services in 2019", showing that in 2019, the total number of visits to medical and health institutions nationwide reached 8.72 billion, an increase of 410 million from the previous year, an increase of 4.9%.
On the one hand, there is a huge number of medical visits, on the other hand, there are long-standing problems such as scarcity of medical resources and uneven distribution. The development of Internet medical treatment is believed to greatly alleviate existing problems.
Although there is no substantial policy implementation for the integration of Internet medical services into medical insurance payments, the development space is optimistic about the outside world.
Haitong Securities pointed out in a research report recently released that after the inclusion of Internet medical care in the scope of medical insurance payment, there are new opportunities for industry change. According to calculations by Haitong Securities, the scale of the Internet medical payment market will reach 597 billion yuan in 2025, of which the online medical insurance payment scale will increase from zero to 105.7 billion yuan in 2025, and is expected to continue to grow.
At the same time, the Internet medical industry is attracting new entrants, and Chinese medicine is also beginning to get involved. Many offline public hospitals across the country have opened online consultation services.
Ma Guanglei believes that in the future, the services involved in Internet medical care will not be limited to the current consultation and prescription of medicines. In fact, the country has made plans for smart medical services from the policy level. The services that Internet hospitals can participate in include pre-diagnosis and diagnosis. The main goal of each link during and after diagnosis is to optimize the entire diagnosis and treatment process.
In addition, there is still huge room for expansion in the Internet medical field in the future, including follow-up and wearable device applications.
On the other hand, some industry experts believe that Internet medical care will also subvert the working mode of doctors. Doctors may change from sitting in the consulting room waiting for patients to actively looking for patients online.
However, no matter what kind of changes and attempts, based on serving patients and ensuring safety and quality, Internet medical care can truly usher in the spring. (Finish)