Two professors at The University of Memphis recently took their health care expertise around the globe.
Cyril Chang, professor of economics, and Sandra Richardson, assistant professor of management information systems, visited China in June as part of the China-Tennessee Health Care Exchange Program. The two were part of a group of eight Tennessee health care consultants and health officials invited by the Chinese Ministry of Health to share their thoughts on health care reform.
"The goal of the program is to encourage China and Tennessee to exchange ideas on health care and learn from each other on how we deliver health care," Chang said.
The program, started by Governor Phil Bredesen in 2007, is a collaboration between The U of M, Vanderbilt and East Tennessee State University.
From June 7- 22, over 100 Chinese health officials joined Chang and Richardson's group in the city of Xi'an to attend the program's seminars. Kathy Taylor, the deputy commissioner of health for the United States, also attended.
"They want to know desperately how to insure everybody at a low cost in rural and urban areas," said Chang, who is also director of the Methodist Le Bonheur Center for Healthcare Economics. "They are in a big hurry to bring their health care system up to world standards."
Chang said China's main health care problems are financing health care, setting up payment systems for doctors and patients, caring for vulnerable people and creating and maintaining health insurance plans. More than 200 million Chinese lack any form of health insurance.
Chang, who grew up in Taiwan, said China's challenge of providing care for a massive population with few resources gave him perspective on the U.S. health care system.
"We learned how lucky we are in the U.S. and that we take these state-of-the-art services for granted," he said. "We have higher expectations than we can possibly deliver."
The major difference between China and the United States in health care is those "state-of-the-art services" and the cost to provide them, Chang said.
"Their health care system is much less sophisticated and less high-tech but inexpensive," he said. "Ours is the opposite. It's highly technologically advanced and highly expensive."
Richardson said China's major cities provide care comparable to the U.S., but the quality of care in rural areas, where food and water sanitation is a problem, is a different story.
"It's like comparing apples to oranges," she said. "They don't even have the basic knowledge and sanitary conditions to just maintain a facility. In the larger cities like Beijing, it's very similar. But as you move out into the rural cities, it's very different."
Technologically, cities like Beijing are on the verge of making all patient records electronic.
In rural China, however, Richardson said access to computers is very limited.
China's collective mindset in handling health care is what Richardson said struck her the most. In the U.S., health care systems and programs can develop independently. Richardson said the opposite is true in China.
"Very little gets developed without the government," she said.
Last May, China announced plans for a $124 billion three-year makeover of its health care system. The plans, called Guidelines on Deepening the Reform of the Health-care System, call for an even greater government role in "formulating policies and plans, raising funds, providing service and supervising" to ensure fair and equal services.
The goal of the health care package is to provide "safe, effective, convenient and affordable health services" to China's 1.3 billion people by 2020. The document also outlines the construction of new clinics in each of the country's 700,000 rural villages and a new hospital in each county.
Chang said even if the reform package brings only the most basic care to rural China, it will be a noticeable upgrade.
"They have a very ambitious project," Chang said. "It's a huge undertaking, but it can do a lot of good for the people. It will help."
is a member of the 
Be the first to comment on this article!