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医保支付方式改革有关情况介绍

The piece argues that China’s disease-based medical insurance payment reform, through dynamic DRG/DIP grouping, exception review mechanisms, and retention of savings, can protect fund sustainability while encouraging clinical innovation and higher-quality care.

医保支付方式改革有关情况介绍(第8期)_腾讯新闻
National Healthcare Security Administration · By 腾讯网; 国家医保局 · 13 July 2026 · read the original in Chinese →

【编者按】党的二十大以来,党中央、国务院多次对深化医药卫生体制改革,促进医疗、医保、医药协同发展和治理作出决策部署。党的二十届三中、四中全会对深化医保支付方式改革提出明确要求,2026年《政府工作报告》提出要深化医保支付方式改革,完善结余资金使用政策。国家医保局坚决贯彻落实党中央、国务院决策部署,持续深化医保支付方式改革,蹄疾步稳推进按病种付费改革落地实施,赋能医疗机构高质量发展,不断增强人民群众医保获得感、幸福感和安全感。

[Editor’s Note] Since the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee and the State Council have on many occasions issued decisions and plans for deepening reform of the medical and health-care system and promoting coordinated development and governance across medical services, medical insurance, and pharmaceuticals. The Third and Fourth Plenary Sessions of the 20th Central Committee set out clear requirements for deepening reform of medical insurance payment methods, and the 2026 Government Work Report called for deeper reform of such payment methods and for improving policies on the use of surplus funds. The National Healthcare Security Administration has resolutely implemented the decisions and plans of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, continued to deepen reform of medical insurance payment methods, advanced the implementation of disease-based payment reform at a brisk yet steady pace, empowered the high-quality development of medical institutions, and continually strengthened the people’s sense of gain, happiness, and security in medical insurance.

推进按病种付费为主的多元支付方式改革,是医保发挥战略性购买作用、赋能医疗创新的核心抓手。支付方式改革坚持尊重临床、包容创新、分类引导、动态适配,既守住基金可持续底线,又从资金保障、资源激励、方向引导、数据支持四方面,全方位支撑临床技术、诊疗模式、学科建设、医药协同创新发展,推动医疗服务从规模扩张转向质量效益驱动。

Advancing reform toward a diversified system of payment methods with disease-based payment as the mainstay is the core lever by which medical insurance can play its strategic purchasing role and empower medical innovation. Reform of payment methods adheres to the principles of respecting clinical practice, accommodating innovation, providing categorized guidance, and adapting dynamically. It both holds the bottom line of fund sustainability and, from four dimensions - funding guarantees, resource incentives, directional guidance, and data support - gives comprehensive support to the innovative development of clinical technologies, diagnosis-and-treatment models, discipline building, and medical-pharmaceutical coordination, driving medical services away from scale expansion and toward quality- and efficiency-led growth.

DRG/DIP uses big data as its foundation and resource consumption as its yardstick; its grouping design is dynamically adjusted and, together with supporting mechanisms such as case-by-case discussion for special exceptions, builds the institutional basis for accommodating new technologies, new therapies, new drugs and devices, and composite diagnosis and treatment. Cases such as organ transplantation, neonatal diseases, and multiple severe trauma are directly and prospectively placed into separate groups under DRG rather than entering conventional groups, so that cases with high degrees of innovation and heavy resource consumption are identified first. At the level of refined subgroups, stratification by MCC (major comorbidities or complications) and CC (comorbidities or complications) assigns complex cases to groups with higher weights, covering the incremental costs of innovative treatment. DIP separately generates core disease categories for newly added innovative procedures such as minimally invasive, targeted, and interventional operations, taking account of both grouping stability and innovation.

Medical technology is advancing with each passing day. To ensure that grouping schemes better reflect clinical realities, the National Healthcare Security Administration issued the Interim Measures for the Management of Disease-Based Payment under Medical Security (Yibaofa [2025] No. 18), which clearly states that grouping schemes should, in principle, be adjusted once every two years. Beginning in August 2025, the Administration organized the adjustment of the version 3.0 grouping scheme for disease-based payment; a preliminary adjustment plan has now been formed and is being circulated for comment. Surgical robots, for example, as an innovative technology, have already been applied clinically across multiple disciplines because they cause less trauma to patients, involve milder pain, and allow faster recovery. In the DRG 3.0 grouping scheme, DRG groups are subdivided according to whether robot-assisted surgery is used, forming nine groups involving robot-assisted surgery; in the preliminary DIP 3.0 grouping scheme, corresponding groups have been established for disease categories including knee-joint disease, fractures of the lumbar spine and pelvis, and femoral neck fractures.

No grouping scheme can cover every case. In clinical practice, a small number of cases involve complex conditions, multidisciplinary joint diagnosis and treatment, or the use of new drugs and new technologies. For this reason, the National Healthcare Security Administration has introduced a supporting policy of case-by-case discussion for special exceptions. Under the policy, the number of such cases must account for no more than 5 percent of total DRG discharge cases and no more than 0.5 percent of total DIP discharge cases. At present, half of the country’s pooled-fund regions use DRG payment and half use DIP payment, while the two municipalities of Tianjin and Shanghai use both DRG and DIP payment. Judging from nationwide applications for special exceptions in 2025, the average application ratio in DRG payment regions was 2 percent, while in DIP payment regions it was 0.4 percent. Nationwide, 2.674 million cases applied for special-exception discussion, 2.324 million were approved after review, and the approval rate was 86.9 percent; medical insurance fund expenditure was about 64.473 billion yuan, and the average medical insurance fund expenditure per approved special-exception case was 27,700 yuan. The full implementation of special-exception discussion has effectively dispelled medical institutions’ concerns about admitting critical and severe cases and using innovative drugs and consumables, making people feel more secure and better protected when seeking medical care.

Disease-based payment reform guides hospitals to take the initiative in optimizing clinical pathways, improving service efficiency, and generating surpluses under disease-based payment. Surplus funds are retained by medical institutions and may be used as development funds and performance rewards, further encouraging institutions to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and innovate proactively, thereby forming a virtuous cycle of “technological innovation - higher CMI value (case mix index; the higher the index, the greater the technical difficulty of the cases treated by a hospital) - retained surplus - continued investment in innovation.” Since Lianyungang began reforming disease-based payment, for example, the CMI value of its tertiary hospitals has risen by about 24 percentage points, and the capacity and proportion of medical institutions treating difficult, severe, and complex cases have steadily increased. Xinjiang has promoted a shift among medical institutions from “scale expansion” to “quality and efficiency”: institutions have taken the initiative to strengthen cost control, optimize diagnosis-and-treatment processes, and raise their level of medical technology, making the allocation of medical resources more rational. In 2025, the CMI index of tertiary medical institutions across the region rose from 1.21 to 1.58; they became more oriented toward the diagnosis and treatment of acute, difficult, and severe diseases. In some tertiary medical institutions, surgical operations are now concentrated mainly in grade-three and grade-four procedures, while common and basic diseases are being diverted to secondary and primary medical institutions, powerfully promoting tiered diagnosis and treatment.

China’s medical insurance, guarding you for life! Safeguarding the security of the medical insurance fund is everyone’s responsibility. Reporting hotline for combating insurance fraud: 010-89061396, 010-89061397; email: jubao@nhsa.gov.cn.

Y done · S save · G great · B bad · N not for me