General practitioners' perspectives of the integrated health care system: a cross-sectional study in Wuhan, China

Background: In recent years, the Chinese government has introduced a new system called the integrated health care system to deepen health care reform and enhance the capacity of the primary health care services. Objective: We aimed to investigate the perceptions and opinions of general practitioners (GPs) on the integrated health care system. Methods: A cross-sectional investigation involving 764 GPs in Hubei province of China was conducted. We used a self-designed questionnaire to collect information on demographics, GPs' knowledge and attitude of the integrated health care system. Data on 749 GPs with completed questionnaires were analysed descriptively. We conducted Spearman rank correlation analysis to test correlation of grade data. Results: 60.92% of the 749 GPs were familiar with the integrated health care system. 88.25% of the GPs were apt to support its development and 70.09% thought it could promote downward referral of patients. The GPs' familiarity with the integrated health care system was significantly related to professional guidance from doctors in higher hospitals (P < 0.05), but not job titles of GPs (P > 0.05). 78.0% of GPs thought that the main benefit of the integrated health care system was the reduction of patients' health care costs; 70.1% believed that the most difficulty was insufficient publicity. Conclusions: The GPs' general cognition of the integrated health care system was general. Most of the GPs supported the integrated health care system and believed that it contributed to decrease the patients' health care costs. Insufficient publicity and the incomplete two-way referral mechanism were regarded to be the main obstacles to its development.