"China Health Statistical Yearbook 2021" shows that 23,500 non-public medical institutions across the country have lost 130 billion yuan a year, with an average loss of 5.53 million yuan per company. The private hospital system is tightening its belt to live. An industry insider speculated to the medical think tank: "If nothing unexpected happens, a large number of private hospitals may go bankrupt in the future. For private hospitals, survival is the top priority."
However, recently, a news about private hospitals has attracted the attention of the industry. The Heyou International Hospital, which was built with a total investment of 10 billion yuan by Midea Group, has ushered in the top of its main building. The hospital is located in Beijiao New City, Shunde District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province. Construction has started in November 2020 and is expected to be put into use in 2024. It is a non-profit Grade A comprehensive hospital that radiates to Guangzhou-Foshan and surrounding areas.
Midea built a super-large hospital, taking too much
It is reported that Heyou International Hospital is a super-large hospital with 1,500 beds. Liu, the director of the establishment of Heyou International Hospital, imitated , introduced that the hospital will follow the standards of the Grade A comprehensive hospital and the highest standards of international quality system certification. With internationalization, digitalization, intelligence and modernization as the construction direction, it will recruit top discipline leaders from the world, build particle therapy centers, medical transformation centers, etc., introduce a number of world-leading medical equipment, simultaneously build doctor training bases and nurse training schools, and create a comprehensive platform for the coordinated development of medical teaching and research. Chen Lihong, assistant director of the construction of
, introduced that after the hospital is fully completed, the number of employees is expected to reach more than 3,000, of which overseas experts will account for 20%.
is different from many comprehensive and intricate private comprehensive hospitals. Heyou has targeted distinctive high-end medical care from the very beginning and is in line with international standards. In combination with the regional disease popularization and market demand, Heyou focuses on six major centers: oncology medicine, orthopedics and sports medicine, brain science and neuromedicine, cardiovascular medicine, gynecology and children's medicine, health management and geriatric medicine, and promote multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment model (MDT) ; an international medical center that meets the medical service requirements of local citizens and foreigners.
However, unlike the high-end strategic layout of Heyou Hospital seen by outsiders, industry veterans pointed out incisively that the above publicity only stays on the surface, and real operations may be difficult to achieve.
Chen Shenwei, an industry veteran who has been deeply engaged in the non-public medical field for more than 20 years, believes that Heyou Hospital has taken too much steps, with 1,500 beds belonging to super-large hospitals, while Foshan has a permanent population of only 9.6126 million.
In Heyou's expectations, the hospital has a superior geographical location. It is located in the Beijiao New City and Sanlong Bay high-end innovation cluster in Shunde District, Foshan. It is half an hour drive from Guangzhou. In addition to serving the Guangzhou-Foshan area, it will also radiate to . The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area , benefiting 70 million people.
However, Chen Shenwei pointed out that it is difficult for Heyou Hospital to compete with Guangzhou's Grade A hospital . Guangzhou has rich medical resources and a good reputation. For a hospital, word of mouth is the most important, and Heyou has no advantage in this regard. Moreover, because it is close to Guangzhou, even local patients with severe diseases in Foshan will be siphoned by Guangzhou.
In addition, Fosun Chancheng Hospital, Chancheng District, Foshan City, which is also a third-tier non-public medical treatment, will also squeeze Heyou Hospital. Fosun Chancheng Hospital was built in 1958 and was transformed from a public hospital into a private hospital. In recent years, it has also introduced Fosun Group franchise. "Chancheng Hospital has decades of foundation, and Heyou Hospital is no match for Hechancheng Hospital within 5 to 10 years," said Chen Shenwei.
In the official publicity, the biggest highlight of Heyou Hospital is to invest 2 billion yuan to establish a proton heavy ion center, a proton treatment room with a rotating frame, and a multi-ray angle heavy ion treatment room.
, director of Heyou Hospital, introduced that ion technology is divided into proton radiotherapy and heavy ion radiotherapy, which is one of the cutting-edge cancer radiotherapy methods.Compared with traditional radiotherapy, ion treatment for multiple malignant tumors in Guangdong Province such as nasopharyngeal carcinoma has the advantages of short course of treatment, small pain, good efficacy and few side effects.
Liu also mentioned that due to the high complexity of this technology system, the one-time investment cost is huge. According to the official website of the International Federation of Ion Therapy Association (PTCOG) , as of May 2021, there were only 101 proton heavy ion therapy centers operating in the world, and only Shanghai Proton Heavy Ion Hospital and Gansu Province Wuwei Cancer Hospital operated heavy ion projects. The construction of Heyou's heavy ion center will greatly improve the cancer treatment level of , the Greater Bay Area, and even , in South China.
Proton heavy ion center can become the business card of Heyou Hospital, helping Heyou Hospital improve its reputation in a short period of time?
"Heavy ion center is a great investment. In addition to the investment in equipment, there is also a corresponding talent team. The country does not currently have such top talents. It needs to be hired from abroad, and the annual salary of a single talent is as high as millions. The operating status of heavy ion centers that have been opened in China is not ideal. Such projects are not even easy to open provincial key hospitals. Heyou Hospital takes over such a large project as soon as it starts. For a new hospital, discipline construction and talent training start from scratch. Whether it can be eaten is also a big problem."
Chen Shenwei suggested that heavy ion centers radiate to patients across the country, while Heyou Hospital is only in the South China region. Therefore, in the future, heavy ion centers must have independent operation ideas.
Ideal and plump, reality skinny
It is reported that the Heyou International Hospital project originated from the founder of Midea He Xiangjian is from Shunde, Foshan. He invested in establishing Heyou International Hospital with the original intention of "benefiting the hometown and giving back to the society", and positioned Heyou as a non-profit hospital. All the revenue surplus of the hospital in the future will be used for the hospital's own development, medical research, and social welfare.
Hyou Hospital also received strong support from the local government. Initially, after spending tens of millions of yuan to hire an internationally renowned consulting team for investigation, He found that the difficulty of establishing the institute was too great and was put on hold for a while. Later, the Shunde Party and Government team listed it as a key work matter and set up a special team to help solve the problems in person, and the project came from paper to the ground.
In 2019, Guo Wenhai, then deputy secretary of the Foshan Municipal Party Committee and secretary of the Shunde District Party Committee, led members of the party and government team of Shunde to Midea headquarters to listen to He Xiangjian's idea of building a hospital, and made on-site office decisions to initially determine the location of the hospital project. Shunde has held meetings of the district party committee standing committee to study and promote hospital construction, and has set up a high-standard working team to connect with enterprises and work on-site to solve problems.
This year, "Support Midea Holdings to build high-level private hospitals" was also included in this year's Shunde District Party Congress report.
Heyou Hospital is a rising star in running a private hospital. Unlike real estate developers who follow the trend and pursue profits, Midea is an industrial background. Judging from the non-profit attributes and investment of Heyou Hospital, industry insiders believe that Heyou's original intention to run a hospital is good.
It takes decades to precipitate a hospital, and it cannot be accomplished by a lot of money and enthusiasm. The expectation is very different from reality, especially for those who do not understand non-public medical care.
" Social medical has never shortage of cross-border investors, but from the past rush to the current bankruptcy wave, many real estate and venture capital companies have failed to cross-border hospitals. Chen Shenwei told the medical think tank that the reason is nothing more than blind construction and unclear positioning; lack of deep understanding of the market and demand, such as building high-end obstetrics and gynecology hospitals, facing disagreement in China; the most fatal thing is that the hospital's strategic positioning is unclear and its operation and management cannot keep up.
"From its investment background, I think it is OK, but from this strategic plan, if a hospital with such a large scale does not have someone with operational experience and ability to operate, it will eventually get into a dilemma."
How to run a private hospital?
In Chen Shenwei's view, whether a private hospital can continue to operate is not only with sufficient funds to survive the loss period of several years. The most important thing is whether the strategic plan formulated by the hospital is accurate and whether it has a good operator and operation management team.
Hyou Hospital still has a lot of shortcomings in these aspects.
The usual style of private hospitals is to recruit the directors of public hospitals to be the managers of private hospitals. The same is true for Heyou Hospital. Liu, the director of the hospital, was previously the director of , Foshan Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, .
Anyone who is familiar with non-public medical care knows that if the director of a public hospital is asked to be the manager of a private hospital, after historical verification, it often ends in failure. Public and private hospitals are completely different operating systems. The land and equipment of public hospitals are free, and talents are provided by the state and have supplementary resources. Private hospitals need to raise funds for construction and bear their own profits and losses, which is equivalent to operating a company.
"Private hospitals need people who truly understand operations and management and understand specific medical industries to take the helm, but such people are rare in the industry. "Chen Shenwei said.
Director of the Life Sciences and Health Medical Legal Department of Beijing Jundu Law Firm and Kaisheng Consulting Life Sciences and Health Medical Expert Consulting Consulting Zhang Wenbo also told the medical think tank that the hospital is a long-term project and needs to consider the basic population of the region, specialist positioning + large expert teams in place. Although
has not opened, Heyou Hospital has signed contracts with more than 20 people from all over the country involving oncology, orthopedics and sports medicine, nuclear medicine , nerves and Well-known clinical experts in the specialized fields of brain medicine and cardiovascular.
However, it is easy to find experts, but difficult to keep them. Especially for advanced experts, platform effect and academic growth are more important to them.
Another flaw in private hospitals is that there is a lack of support from medical universities, and it is impossible to form a systematic talent training system, and continuously input excellent students into the hospital.
1 Heyou Hospital is also interested in cultivating internal talents in the hospital. In July this year, Heyou Hospital recruited college graduates covering clinical medicine, technology, medicine, nursing and functional management, and launched a talent training plan to send medical technicians and nursing school enrollment to domestic first-class tertiary hospitals for further study; functional school enrollment schools rotate in the school.
This plan innovatively adopts a dual-tutor system. In addition to professional tutors in the further study unit, Heyou's leading expert resources are also added as professional tutors according to the professional categories of school enrollment, providing a long-term, complete and hierarchical training system, and escort the growth of school enrollment careers in all dimensions.
However, the effect of this form of training needs to be questioned. "The hospital itself lacks the talent training system of medical universities, and just sends graduates to Grade A hospitals for further study for a period of time. It is difficult to form systematic learning. If there are particularly outstanding standard trainees, the hospital will also find ways to stay." Chen Shenwei said.
Chen Shenwei believes that running a private hospital well is the first thing to do to determine the hospital's strategic plan for the next 20 to 30 years, "We must determine whether it is Zhongshan Hospital or Union Hospital that you are targeting. "The second is that for companies like Midea that operate cross-border medical services, we must set up a think tank to find a talent management hospital that truly understands operations, and keep up with the team management.
Social medical industry expert Chen Linhai told the medical think tank that a good hospital is born out, has five-year survival period , laying the foundation for ten years, and there are many successful cases of such a large-scale hospital. The key is to look at the founder's original intention. With the intact policies, funds and plans, the rest can only be left to time to test and settle.
