Number of hospitals in China 2022, by classification

In 2022, the healthcare system in China had 3,523 tier-three hospitals and over 11,000 tier-two hospitals.

Three-tier hospital system

Most Chinese hospitals are categorized into one of three tiers. Tier-three hospitals are the most advanced and specialized institutions, sometimes affiliated with universities, that can provide comprehensive treatments and surgical operations, while tier-one hospitals are designed to provide less complex and more routine medical services and care.

An unbalanced healthcare system

Unlike many other countries, most hospitals in China, including tier-three hospitals, can accept patients directly without general practitioners’ referrals. More qualified medical staff also tend to be concentrated in tier-three hospitals as they offer better research platforms and higher salaries. This has resulted in constantly overcrowded hospitals in China’s cities. Regulators have been trying to reform the system over the past decade, with improvements to primary healthcare institutions, and higher reimbursement rates for medical costs incurred in these facilities. However, for many, hospitals remained the optimal choice for medical treatments of all kinds. Some tier-three hospitals have, therefore, undergone major expansions to facilitate market demands. With a large population and insufficient medical resources, the central province of Henan has many patients traveling to other regions for medical treatments, resulting in an outflow of medical insurance funds from the province. In recent years, the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University in the provincial capital has expanded to over 10,000 beds, generating an annual revenue of over ten billion yuan, making it the largest hospital in China.