Traditional Chinese medicine reimbursement reform in China: implementation progress, policy constraints, and optimization strategies
Fazheng Zhao, Yichi Chen, Xin Tong · 2026
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Description
China's health insurance now pays for more traditional Chinese medicine, and Fazheng Zhao, Yichi Chen, and Xin Tong review how that reform is landing. Their 2026 study reads national and local policy documents alongside published research. The question is whether payment rules built for Western medicine can fit a system that treats by pattern, not just by disease.
Coverage has widened for clinics, techniques, and herbal decoctions, and some regions now pay special fees for pattern-based outpatient care or fold the field into bundled budgets. Yet drug-style payment groups still undervalue pattern work, service prices sit low, and cost caps on herbs clash with quality goals. The authors propose field-specific pricing, fairer disease grouping, and quality tiers that pay more for better herbs.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Fazheng Zhao, Yichi Chen, Xin Tong |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 58 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |