Beijing, Aug. 26, 2026 – China’s five-year pilot program for primary health care reform has delivered measurable improvements in rural and mountainous regions, with two national pilot zones reporting stronger specialist networks, faster emergency response, and better chronic-disease management, according to officials at a National Health Commission press conference today.

The Commission launched the “comprehensive pilot zones for primary health care” in 2021 to address infrastructure gaps, upgrade workforce capabilities, and test integrated service models. Beijing’s Miyun District and Sichuan’s Luxian County – both designated as national pilots – have introduced innovations in resource allocation, talent development, and medical-prevention integration, with results now showing in patient access and satisfaction.

Key Takeaways

Attribute	Detail
Event	National Health Commission Press Conference
Date	August 26, 2026
Theme	Reform and Innovation in Primary Health Care Pilot Zones
Featured Pilots	Miyun District (Beijing), Luxian County (Sichuan)
Key Focus Areas	Resource allocation, talent training, emergency networks, chronic-care integration
Notable Outcomes	基层 visit share rising; emergency response times shortened; chronic mortality down 3.25 pp

Miyun: Mountainous Terrain, Targeted Investment

Miyun, Beijing’s only national primary-care pilot, treats the designation as “a heavy responsibility,” said Zhang Bo, the district’s deputy party secretary. The district party committee established a leading group headed by the party secretary, and health-system performance is now incorporated into the overall party-building assessment.

Fiscal commitment is substantial: health spending has exceeded 13% of the district’s general public budget for three consecutive years, supplemented by nearly CNY 200 million from Beijing municipality to renovate old clinics and acquire new equipment. Over the same period, Miyun recruited 14 senior physicians and 82 university-trained village doctors.

To serve its scattered mountain communities, the district built a sub-regional medical center in the northern mountains, upgrading CT and dialysis units and developing four specialty departments – pain, digestion, blood dialysis, and ophthalmology. In 2025, that center’s annual outpatient visits rose 7.4%. More than 50% of appointments at secondary and tertiary hospitals are now reserved for primary-care referrals, and all grassroots facilities have stroke and chest-pain treatment units. About 30 municipal-level experts rotate weekly to remote clinics via “Internet+ health village” programs.

Luxian: Countywide Network and Digital Dispatch

Sichuan’s Luxian County, a 2021 pilot, has focused on integrating county-township-village resources through a closely knit medical community led by the county people’s hospital, said Wang Bin, party secretary of the medical community. “We unified management, pushed experts down, and linked data up,” Wang said.

The county has dispatched 149 full-time rotational experts to grassroots clinics, set up 46 joint outpatient departments – including gynecology and traditional Chinese medicine – and helped township centers add two hemodialysis rooms and four new clinical departments. More than 60 new techniques, such as laparoscopic hernia repair, are now performed at lower-level facilities.

Digital tools are central: the medical community’s shared imaging, ECG, and ultrasound platforms process remote consultations in real time. To date, nearly 71,500 remote ECG diagnoses, about 60,000 remote imaging reads, and over 1,200 remote ultrasound guidance cases have been completed, enabling mutual recognition of test results across the county.

Emergency care has been overhauled with a proprietary “Huijitong” platform – a ride-hailing-style dispatch system that automatically alerts the nearest ambulance and emergency team when a village doctor makes a one-tap call. Vital signs are transmitted en route, allowing hospital specialists to prepare treatment plans before the patient arrives. Last September, a 42-year-old heart-attack patient in Chaohe Town received emergency care within 4 minutes, reached the county hospital in 29 minutes, and underwent interventional surgery 26 minutes later – a total of 75 minutes from symptom onset to reperfusion.

Chronic-Care Reform: Tiered Management for 200,000+ Patients

Luxian’s party secretary and county magistrate, Zhang Cheng, outlined a chronic-disease management model targeting five conditions – hypertension, diabetes, COPD, lumbar disc herniation, and new strokes within six months – plus locally prioritized additions. A tiered responsibility system assigns hospital directors to geographic areas, family doctors to villages, and specialists to specific diseases. Patients are color-coded red (high-risk), orange (medium), and green (low) for differentiated management.

All 20 township health centers now run integrated chronic-disease outpatient clinics. Since 2020, the county’s premature mortality rate from four major chronic diseases has dropped by 3.25 percentage points. Luxian has invested CNY 1.6 billion to build or renovate 18 medical institutions, adding 126,500 square meters of floor space, and CNY 9 million to equip secondary centers with CT, gastroscope, and automated biochemistry analyzers. A “CT exam within one hour” service circle is now in place.

Frontline Delivery: Faster Visits, Personalized Care

At the community level, Miyun’s Guoyuan Community Health Center serves 75,000 residents. Director Wang Mingfu said the center redesigned its floor plan, placing consultation rooms and lab tests on the same floor and installing self-service kiosks, cutting average visit time by about 30 minutes. It has opened specialty clinics for hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, and COPD, and added sleep and gastroenterology clinics with expert support. A “Talk with the Director” and QR-code feedback system helps resolve patient complaints quickly.

Guoyuan also runs a weight-management and sarcopenia-prevention program. Since April 2026, more than 200 overweight residents have received personalized diet-exercise plans using body-composition analysis. Over 2,000 seniors have been screened for sarcopenia; 63 high-risk individuals completed 12-week exercise interventions, with significant improvements in lower-limb strength and balance.

For rural doctors, a training partnership with Peking University First Hospital and Miyun District Hospital has upgraded skills. Wang Rui, a general practitioner at Gaoling Township center, said the six-month program helped her handle emergencies and manage diabetes – citing a 57-year-old asthma patient stabilized and transferred, and a 67-year-old diabetic whose HbA1c dropped from 9.5% to normal with remote insulin adjustment.

Market Impact Analysis

The pilot results carry implications beyond the two demonstration zones. Miyun’s model – combining fiscal prioritization, specialist rotations, and digital referral pathways – offers a template for other mountainous regions with dispersed populations. Luxian’s integrated medical community and automated emergency dispatch system address the perennial challenge of rural-urban service gaps, potentially influencing provincial-level policies across western China.

The chronic-disease management framework, with its color-coded patient stratification and “three packages, four integrations” structure, signals a policy shift from episodic treatment to population-based preventive care. This aligns with national priorities on healthy aging and non-communicable disease control, areas where primary care systems have historically been weak.

For pharmaceutical and medical device suppliers, the expanded specialty services at township centers – including dialysis, imaging, and surgical capabilities – suggest growing procurement demand at the county level. The emphasis on remote diagnostics and data sharing also points to sustained investment in health IT infrastructure.

Forward-Looking Statement

The National Health Commission said it will hold additional press conferences in other pilot zones to share further reform experiences. Industry analysts expect the Commission to distill best practices into national guidelines for primary-care system upgrades, potentially influencing the next five-year health plan.

Miyun and Luxian’s progress in raising grass-roots unit visit shares and reducing chronic mortality offers early evidence that targeted investment and integrated management can yield measurable returns. However, replicating these results across China’s vast and diverse rural landscape – with significant inter-provincial disparities in fiscal capacity and workforce density – remains a formidable challenge. The coming 12–18 months will show whether these pilot models can scale effectively beyond their current geographies.-China Health Reform Pulse

Policy Source: https://www.nhc.gov.cn/xcs/c100122/202608/d4910e8ac75a474e9c86e07732fe6ae0.shtml

Beijing, Aug 18, 2026 — China’s National Health Commission, National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and National Disease Control Administration jointly issued a 10-point directive to overhaul family doctor contract services, expanding coverage from grassroots clinics to tier-two and tier-three public hospitals and private facilities while mandating artificial intelligence integration and wearable health devices across primary care networks by 2030.

Policy Snapshot

Attribute	Detail
Issuers	NHC General Office; NATCM General Office; NDCA General Office
Document	Notice on Deepening “Six Expansions” to Solidify Family Doctor Contract Services
File No.	Guo Wei Ban Ji Ceng Han〔2026〕273
Target year	2030
Core focus	Tiered diagnosis and treatment; primary care capacity building
Total measures	10 specific requirements

The Six Expansions

The directive mandates six structural coverage extensions:

1. Specialist inclusion — By end-2026, grassroots clinics must deploy internal medicine, pediatrics, and TCM specialists as family doctors; by end-2027, all other clinical specialties join after training.
2. Hospital integration — By end-2026, all general practitioners at tightly integrated medical consortium lead hospitals must provide contract services via grassroots platforms; by end-2027, physicians stationed at grassroots facilities for over one year must enroll.
3. Private sector entry — Private institutions with strong capacity and reputation may deliver contract services for elderly, pediatric, and mental health populations via multi-site practice arrangements.
4. Individual contracts — Shift from team-based to individual physician-patient contracts by end-2027, with the family doctor as the first accountable party.
5. Disease scope — By end-2027, expand from chronic disease management to combined chronic and infectious disease co-management, including respiratory, gastrointestinal, vector-borne diseases, tuberculosis, and HIV prevention. Family doctors may issue vaccine prescriptions where qualified.
6. Flexible terms — By end-2026, replace fixed contract cycles with adaptable durations; first-time contracts require face-to-face signing, renewals permitted online.

Key Implementation Timeline

Deadline	Requirement
End-2026	Internal medicine, pediatrics, TCM specialists at grassroots clinics enrolled as family doctors; tightly integrated consortium GPs deployed; flexible contract cycles available
End-2027	All clinical specialties eligible; stationed hospital physicians enrolled; individual contracts mandated; infectious disease co-management integrated

Additional Directives

• Gatekeeping mandate — Family doctors assume first-contact responsibility; patients beyond a doctor’s scope are referred within the same institution or upward via consortium green channels, with bidirectional referral IT platforms required.
• Segmented services — Elderly, children, pregnant women, and disabled groups sign via residence-based clinics; working populations sign via employer-based facilities; family-unit enrollment encouraged.
• Content optimization — Packages include health education, chronic disease follow-up, pediatric guidance, elderly assessments, medication counseling, TCM constitution identification, dietary therapy, medicinal tea substitutes, and Baduanjin exercise programs.
• Digital enablement — “AI+” contract services, online renewal/consultation/follow-up/referral, annual “health portraits” integrating electronic records and wearable device data, and real-time health monitoring systems.

Market Impact Analysis

The directive operationalizes Beijing’s broader tiered-care reform by tightening the gatekeeping role of family doctors—a structural pivot designed to divert patient flow from overloaded tertiary hospitals to primary facilities. The inclusion of tier-two and tier-three hospitals alongside private clinics signals a unified primary-care network rather than an isolated grassroots system.

The AI and wearable device mandates are particularly notable. By formally embedding artificial intelligence into family doctor workflows and mandating annual digital health portraits fed by wearable data, regulators are betting on technology to close the capacity gap at the primary level, where physician shortages have historically undermined contract-service quality. If executed at scale, the “AI+” push could reduce administrative burdens on grassroots clinicians and standardize chronic-disease monitoring across provinces.

The TCM integration—constitution identification, medicinal cuisine, and Baduanjin—creates a distinct regulatory moat for domestic traditional medicine providers while potentially limiting market access for foreign device and pharma companies in the primary care segment.

Forward-Looking Statement

Healthcare analysts expect the 10-point plan to accelerate consolidation of China’s primary-care market, creating partnership opportunities for private clinics, health-tech vendors, and wearable device manufacturers that can demonstrate AI-enabled diagnostic or patient-management tools. The mandate for tier-two and tier-three hospital participation may gradually blur institutional boundaries, potentially reshaping referral revenue streams. With the 2030 target date aligning with the 15th Five-Year Plan cycle, the directive sets the regulatory foundation for a nationwide family doctor network that could serve as the data and patient-flow backbone for future value-based care pilots. Pilot zones—including national primary care reform demonstration areas—are expected to roll out implementation templates by mid-2027.-China Health Reform Pulse

Policy Source: https://www.nhc.gov.cn/jws/c100073/202608/b42e53e6d1f54bb293a9b6d8ed25de1e.shtml