China's NHFPC to Crack Down on Fraudulent Hospital-related Online Practices
NHFPC, 5/03/16
China's National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) has released a notice that it will work with all related departments in China's provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities to crack down on "hospital scalpers," misleading hospital-related advertisements, and people who fraudulently recommend hospitals via online channels. Hospital scalpers refer to people who use commercial hospital booking services to book consultations at a hospital, and then resell the bookings at a much higher price.
The NHFPC will increase its supervision of online information, and create a database of harmful links and search terms. The Cyberspace Administration of China will use the information collected by the NHFPC to eradicate illegal healthcare-related information from the internet and take measures to prevent the spread of this kind of information.
In order to maintain the quality of hospital advertisements, the NHFPC will now prohibit online hospital advertisements from containing any information that was not previously approved.
The NHFPC said that hospitals are required to stop doctors from accepting personal reservations for consultations. In addition, all hospital bookings must be made through a unified hospital administration system, and commercial hospital appointment booking services are expressly forbidden.
Local branches of the NHFPC have also been instructed to conduct additional audits of key hospitals with random checks targeting hospital scalpers. Finally, hospitals are required to increase measures to completely eradicate the problem of hospital scalpers.
Editor's Note: The crackdown by the NHFPC follows on the heels of an announcement earlier this week that the Chinese government will investigate Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) over an incident in which a student died after undergoing an experimental cancer treatment that he found through an advertisement on the online search giant's platform. For more background on this topic, please see "Chinese Regulators to Investigate Baidu Over Medical Ads, Student's Cancer Death" MD 5/04/16 and "Beijing Prohibits Public Hospitals from Using Commercial Appointment Booking Services" MD 3/01/16 issues.
Keywords: online healthcare online advertising regulation Internet Cyberspace Administration of China NHFPC mobile healthcare
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