Patients in public hospitals in Guangdong province will be charged a medical service fee beginning late this year, a move to reduce the hospitals' dependency on profits from pharmaceutical prescriptions.

The fee will replace a 15 percent "medicine fee" that will be abolished, an official with the local price control authority said Tuesday.

Public hospitals in Shenzhen, Zhanjiang and Shaoguan have been selected as pilot cities for the new fee, said Ma Yun, deputy director of the Guangdong provincial price control bureau.

The medical service fee will be paid through a patient's medical insurance.

"As a result, patients don't need to worry about a bigger financial burden when they go to the hospital," Ma said.

The medical service fee will be introduced after the 15 percent additional medicine cost, a common practice in public hospitals, is abolished, Ma said.

The fee should be canceled within the next three to five years, Ma said.

Under the current plan, doctors have an incentive to prescribe excessive pharmaceuticals, since the hospital collects a percentage of each prescription.

The new fee will replace profits from medicine sales, and will kill the incentive to over-prescribe drugs.

The reform is also aimed at improving the medicine supply system so that public hospitals and clinics are supplied with essential medicines with prices regulated by the government, Ma said.

The introduction of the medical service fee coincides with the central government's plan, announced in April, to increase government funding in public hospitals and allow doctors to charge higher fees for treatment, Ma said.

"But hospitals will be eventually banned from making profits through subscribing expensive medicines and treatment," Ma said.

The medical service fee has not yet been set, Ma said.

"One thing is for sure - we will not introduce a universal fee in the province given the disparity of incomes in the province's Pearl River Delta region and mountainous areas in the eastern and northern part," Ma said.

Many local citizens oppose the plan, saying the service fees for treatment is outrageous.

"We pay registration fees in hospitals. Why do we need to pay a medical service fee?" said Huang Zhongbiao, an IT worker in Tianhe district of Guangzhou.

"It is another way to increase the financial burden on patients," he claimed.

(China Daily August 12, 2009)