In the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), the central government proposes deepening reform of the medical and public healthcare system, promoting separation of treatments and medicines, establishing a tiered medical service and modern hospital management system that covers all urban and rural areas.

People's health is key to China's development in the future, without healthy residents there can be no all-round well-off society. To develop a healthy China, the central government is promoting comprehensive reform of public hospitals so they fulfill their duty to provide non-profit health services for ordinary people. Basic medical services should be improved and medical resources should flow to the grassroots level, especially rural areas.

According to Mao Qun'an, director-general of the National Health and Family Planning Commission's department of communications, the quickest way to strengthen basic level medical services is to extend the high quality medical resources of large public hospitals in cities to local areas, such as sending high-level doctors to grassroots hospitals to provide guidance and diagnosis.

At the same time, the central government has proposed optimizing the organizational structure of healthcare in the country to create a multi-level, connected medical service system, and it wants to encourage private healthcare providers to enter the market.