Calls for Foreigner-Friendly Hospitals in the City

Political advisors suggest Shanghai establish "foreigner-friendly" hospitals to attract foreign talent.

A joint proposal by You Minjian advocates for a multi-tiered medical service system for foreign patients – covering municipal, key district-level, and community health centers – to forge a comprehensive, accessible healthcare network.

"This proposal aims to promote the internationalization and openness of Shanghai's healthcare services," You said, noting it involves multiple stakeholders, including government regulators, hospitals, insurers, service providers and patients.

The proposal recommends designating leading hospitals, such as Huashan and Renji, as city-level benchmarks, while upgrading district hospitals and community clinics to offer multilingual services and standardized support for foreign patients.

It also calls for the launch of a citywide multilingual medical appointment platform, tentatively named "Health Shanghai," offering services such as online registration, treatment navigation, fee estimation, medication information, and one-click translation, to ease foreign residents' healthcare access.

To ensure sustainability, political advisors suggest establishing a unified financial subsidy mechanism for pilot hospitals' multilingual training, system upgrades, and service optimization, plus incentives for commercial insurers to enhance direct billing for foreign patients.

You stressed that the expansion of services for foreigners must not come at the expense of residents.

"If a large number of foreign patients come in, we must consider whether this will crowd out domestic medical resources," he said. "The allocation and balance of medical resources still require careful oversight and management."

The proposal also urges the formulation of unified service standards for foreigner-friendly hospitals, covering language support, service processes, and payment methods, alongside a dynamic evaluation system to link performance with subsidies.

"We need to define which institutions are suitable for international medical services and which are not so that medical tourism and public healthcare can develop in parallel without conflict," he said.