Substantial policy changes to streamline drug approval processes and attract medical experts will be key to developing healthcare in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, said Tse Chun-ming, a veteran Hong Kong businessman who has founded several hospitals on the Chinese mainland.

With an aging population, the seasoned investor foresees huge growth in China's healthcare sector. Tse has invested over 4 billion yuan ($605 million) in private hospitals across the mainland, including the Wuhan Asia Heart Hospital, the Wuhan Asia General Hospital and a heart center in Shantou, Guangdong province.

Tse said in an interview that he will further invest in the Bay Area as more detailed guidelines are unveiled, after the central government in October granted Shenzhen a raft of favorable policies for deepening reform and opening-up. President Xi Jinping on Oct 14 called on Shenzhen to promote the Bay Area development when attending celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the city becoming a special economic zone.

With policy reform, Tse said, more cutting-edge drugs, therapy and facilities could be used in Guangdong hospitals through cooperation with Hong Kong, making the development of healthcare in the Bay Area, both public and private, quite promising. The private sector can be further promoted if social health insurance is allowed in private hospitals in the Bay Area, he added.

But it all depends on how huge the breakthroughs are and how they are implemented, said Tse, who is a National Committee member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top political advisory body. He was one of 17 Hong Kong delegates who attended the Commendation Conference for National Response to COVID-19 on Sept 8 in Beijing for their contributions to the nation's fight against the pandemic.

Tse said that on regional development, the central government gives only guidelines or principles, which can be quite innovative. But when detailed policies are rolled out for implementation, there could be some artificial obstacles that hinder an innovative policy from being realized.

For instance, he said, the Boao Super Hospital in South China's Hainan province is ready to boldly adopt new drugs and new medical facilities, but the long evaluation process by experts from a designated ethics committee has held the hospital back from far-reaching independent innovation.

So it's still too early to make any decisive judgment on how far Shenzhen, as well as the rest of the Bay Area, can go on policy breakthroughs in healthcare development, said Tse.

Crucial expertise
Tse said private hospital development on the mainland should focus on specialized areas that the markets need and are differentiated from the services of public hospitals. For example, Tse said his Bay Area investments will concentrate on heart diseases. Besides Shantou, where he already has a heart disease center, potential target markets are Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Zhuhai, which have large market demands, he said.

The biggest risk when investing in the mainland's private healthcare sector, however, is the lack of distinguished medical experts, Tse said.

Most top medical experts in Hong Kong or overseas work in private medical institutions. The situation is the opposite on the mainland, where public hospitals have the best doctors and nurses, Tse said.

Restricted by the medical system on the mainland, it's difficult and there is little incentive for medical employees to work in private organizations. Failure to attract top medical experts makes private institutions less appealing to patients. It also triggers people's questions over medical standards, or even the safety of these institutions, he said.

The situation also resulted from the government's lack of proper examination and approval, as well as regulation of private medical organizations when they began to enter the market years ago, giving people the impression that private medical institutions offer low-end services, and sometimes provide false information to mislead customers, he added.

Hence, the key for the private sector to share the pie of the domestic healthcare market, including the Bay Area, is to show that they have distinguished medical experts and can meet people's medical needs in a professional and safe way, he said.

Tse expressed the hope that special policies will be created to attract more medical experts from Hong Kong and abroad to join the private sector in the Bay Area, serving as leaders in their specialized areas, to build a trusted brand through word-of-mouth marketing.

In those circumstances, patients will be more willing to visit private medical institutions, and the development of the private sector can be sustained in the long term, serving as an important supplement to the sound yet pressured public healthcare system, Tse said.