Under the past centralized planning system, like most other social welfare facilities, virtually all China's hospitals were invested, owned, and run by the government or state- owned business entities. Until 2000, China completed 16318 hospitals, of which most were built during 1950s and 1990s with common defects in design and engineering.
Major defects are characterized by incomplete functional layout, little consideration of hospital safety systems, lack of environmental friendly concept, deficiency in patient first philosophy, and poor installation and use of medical equipment, and hospital management system. Many foreign hospital designers pointed out, hospitals with such shortcomings are far too outdated to effectively help combat emergency medical crisis and safeguard people’s life. In the wake of 2003 SARS outbreak, the Chinese government at all levels came to realize the importance of upgrading its healthcare system. In the next 10 years, it is projected that 80% of the Chinese hospitals have to gradually undergo a restructuring process by ways of rebuilding, expansion, and relocation.
China’s fast growing hospital construction market should benefit international design and
engineering firms. China built an average of 270 hospitals every year during 1950 and 2000 and 519 hospitals each year from 2000 to 2004. As SARS directly caused an economic lost of RMB300 billion to China, which is partially attributed to the poor and outdated design and planning of most existing healthcare facilities, the Chinese government appropriated millions of dollars to upgrade its healthcare infrastructure.
Such new infrastructure projects will include more centers for disease control, more hospitals for infectious disease, women, children, and mental health, and more emergency life-saving units with the existing general and specialized hospitals. In order to ensure the sustainable development of the Chinese healthcare system, China is badly in need of adopting advanced and modern design concept from the outside world.
Therefore, opportunities exist for healthcare facilities design and engineering firms that are interested in this market. As the Chinese economy is unevenly developed and a vast gap exists between coastal developed regions and inland provinces, such opportunities are mainly concentrated on those medium and large cities in coastal regions plus provincial capital cities in inland provinces. In recent years, more and more Chinese hospital management executives have shown willingness to consider or accept western design ideas. For instance, several hospitals and CDCs in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dongguan have selected design firms from the U.S., France, Japan, and Germany as their partners for their respective projects.