Medical partnerships are being promoted across China by 2020 to provide patients with more sustainable and efficient healthcare services.

China’s top health authority believes that medical partnerships will promote effective cooperation and coordination between different types of medical institutes and will play a very important role in establishing a tiered medical care system which is key to the success of China's ongoing healthcare reform.

All major public hospitals in China are required to participate and take a leading role in the development of medical partnerships by the end of 2017.

By the end of 2016, 205 cities at prefecture level or above in China had piloted medical partnerships, accounting for more than 60 percent of such cities.

These cities have established medical partnerships in various forms, and in many cases a partnership consists of a major public hospital, which leads the partnership, and smaller hospitals and community clinics

Through the cooperation among members of a partnership, patients with minor or chronic diseases are encouraged to seek diagnosis and treatment at community clinics first, instead of overcrowded big hospitals.

In Xiamen, Fujian province, where pilot partnership programs have been established since 2012, the percentage of patients with diabetes who seek treatment at grassroots medical institutions has risen to 78.1 percent, up from 40.7 percent in 2012, and medical expenditure per treatment has decreased 27.5 percent.