Patients gather in large hospitals: the current situation of Chinese hospitals and the direction of medical reform

As doctors, we find it thought-provoking to read in the paper, ‘Is it worth being a doctor? Effective altruism and career choice’.1 It reminds us of the current situation faced by Chinese hospitals and inspires us to think about the direction of future medical reform. At the end of 2020, the Healthcare Report, a well-known research institution, published a list entitled ‘Ranking of operation volume in general hospitals in China’.2 According to this list, the hospital with the largest number of operations in China is the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. In 2020, there were 350 000 operations in the hospital, with an average of 1000 operations per day.2 In recent years, the operation volume in many large hospitals has increased at an alarming rate, which is closely related to the continuous expansion of hospital scale. In addition, large hospitals have also introduced many advanced equipment while expanding their scale. As a result, large hospitals siphoned off a large number of excellent talents from grass-roots hospitals, which also led to overconcentration of patients and difficulty in diverting them. However, because the expansion rate of hospitals cannot keep up …