China to improve regulation on medical insurance funds

BEIJING, June 9 (Xinhua) -- China has formed a tough stance against medical insurance fraud and will strengthen its regulation on the use of medical insurance funds, according to a policy briefing held by the State Council Friday.

An implementation guideline on furthering the regular regulation on the use of medical insurance funds has recently been released to tackle the prominent and difficult problems in this field, said the briefing.

The guideline urged efforts to strengthen law enforcement of medical insurance funds regulation, improve the long-term regulatory mechanisms, and work faster to build a robust, safe, effective, and law-based routine regulatory system with clearly defined rights and responsibilities.

The National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) will implement the requirements of the document in terms of smart regulation, law-based administration, comprehensive evaluation systems, and policy publicity, said Yan Qinghui, deputy head of the NHSA.

The NHSA, with other four relevant departments, has launched a nationwide special campaign to crack down on medical insurance fraud this year to guard the bottom line of the safety of medical insurance funds.

As of April this year, Chinese authorities have inspected over 3.41 million designated medical institutions, and recovered 80.5 billion yuan (about 11.32 billion U.S. dollars) of medical insurance funds, said Yan.