Skip to main content

Table 1 Union clinics and Cooperative Health Stations

From: Extending access to essential services against constraints: the three-tier health service delivery system in rural China (1949–1980)

Union clinics

Union clinics were self-financed, for-profit facilities. Profits (after reserved funds for institution development and employee welfare) were shared according to private practitioners’ proportions of contributions. Such institutional structure was supported through political recognition in the 1955 National Culture and Education Conference: “Union clinics are social welfare institutions that are voluntarily organized by independent intellectual health practitioners”, "as small-scale collective ownership”.

Cooperative Health Stations

The cooperative health stations were primary health institutions established and financed by agricultural cooperatives. Physicians were members of the collective economy and were paid as normal farmers with mid-level working intensity through a system of “work points” to assess performance. Their main mission, similar to union clinics, was to provide primary health care. Profits from cooperative health stations were kept by the cooperative.