Since the healthcare sector in East China's Zhejiang province launched the "Mountain-Sea" Upgrade Project in late March, the province's 13 highest regarded 3A-level hospitals have signed up to help improve the medical services of county-level hospitals in the province's 32 mountainous or island regions. As a result, they have trained about 4,000 medical practitioners there and enabled the grassroots hospitals to provide another 260 new service items for local patients.

Grassroots hospitals in Zhejiang's mountainous and island regions have long been understaffed and underequipped. However, through the province's efforts, the situation is improving.

For instance, several outstanding medical doctors from Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang, have been dispatched to serve in the county-level hospital in the mountainous county of Tiantai. They have also provided telemedicine services for patients visiting grassroots hospitals in the county. As a result, Tiantai's outpatient rate has risen by nearly 6 percent.

In the county-level hospital in the island county of Shengsi, doctors from Hangzhou's Zhejiang Hospital has rolled out 12 new technologies and services, held 31 academic lectures, as well as performed 20 surgeries since they came there in May.

Zhejiang authorities require that each of the 13 highest regarded hospitals dispatch at least 12 medical doctors per month to county-level hospitals in mountainous and island regions, with at least two thirds of these doctors holding senior professional titles.

Deng Pengfei, director of the inspection department at Jingning People's Hospital in Jingning She autonomous county, said that he has learnt a lot through working together with senior doctors sent from First Hospital of Zhejiang Province, especially by observing their diagnosis and judgments. He is also regularly attending a distance training course offered by the Hangzhou hospital.

"I feel that I have now mastered more advanced medical technologies and ideas in better service of patients in Jingning," Deng said.

According to an official from the Zhejiang Health Commission, Zhejiang authorities have also increased financial support for the hospitals that have joined in the "Mountain-Sea" Upgrade Project.

Tiantai county. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

Shengsi county. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]