With advancing reform of Beijing public hospitals, appointment booking has achieved stage-specific success as one of the measures to ease "difficulties in medical care". To further carry out key tasks in deepening medical and health care system reform as required by the State Council and Beijing Municipal Government, upgrade appointment booking service and provide more convenience to the patients, Beijing Municipal Health Bureau has started operation of Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking. China Unicom Beijing Branch (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Unicom") has been selected to carry out construction, operation and maintenance of Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking.
On July 28, 2011, Beijing Municipal Health Bureau and Beijing Unicom jointly held Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking Launching Ceremony, at which Mr. Ding Xiangyang, Deputy Mayor of Beijing Municipal Government, Mr. Ma Xiaowei, Deputy Minister of Ministry of Health, Mr. Tong Jilu, Deputy General Manager of China Unicom Group and other leaders were present; In addition, at the ceremony were also leaders of Municipal Health Bureau, Beijing Unicom, Municipal Health Care Office, Municipal Development and Reform Commission, Municipal Finance Bureau, Municipal H&R and Social Security Bureau, Municipal Economy and Information Technology Commission and other relevant departments, 16 district/county health bureaus and Haidian District Public Service Commission, 66 tertiary hospitals in Beijing as well as relevant leaders, representatives of social supervisors and journalists, about 200 people in total. During the event, Beijing Unicom and 30 tertiary hospitals as the first being on line signed Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking Service and Cooperation Agreement with Beijing Unicom. Mr. Ding Xiangyang, the Deputy Mayor of Municipal Government started Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking.
Since July 28, 2011, Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking has started its trial operation to provide service to the public through telephone and website. 30 tertiary hospitals in Beijing (including all the 21 municipal tertiary hospitals) will take lead in providing phone call and online appointment booking service by Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking. During operation, the Platform will achieve "103", that is, 1 telephone number and network for appointment, by which people can call 114 (010-114 for users not in Beijing) as the unified appointment number or log into the unified appointment website, www.bjguahao.gov.cn, to book regular, special and expert appointments of the online hospitals; Dedicated to public welfare, appointment service has "0" charges; booking period is 3 months, except for some special hospitals and special departments. In addition, the online hospitals will increase doctors' outpatient service, set no limit on booking regular appointments and cancel roll call for the first visits. The Unified Platform for Appointment booking service only shows departments and vocational titles of hospitals and available departments. According to schedule, the Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking will gradually improve its function through trial operation, and before end of this year all tertiary hospitals will be registered with the platform to provide call and online appointment registration service. On January 1, 2012, the city-wide unified platform will start its operation and gradually integrate appointment booking service of secondary hospitals in the whole city.
To ensure a success of Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking in Beijing, Beijing Heath Bureau and Unicom Beijing Branch have made adequate preparation in regulating patient service process of hospitals' outpatient service, optimizing and expanding both software and hardware environment, strengthening service linking between hospitals and the Platform, etc. So far, 30 hospitals registered online have completed their internal system reform and established data exchange mechanism for comprehensively integrating and transferring registration chances with the appointment booking. As a result 80% of the hospitals’ appointments will be available for appointment. There has been totally 6720 DT of logging relays with the unified platform, 1600 seats directly and indirectly serving call booking and 1800 call operators. To support 114 Appointment Booking Project, Beijing Unicom will also provide a new call center site, with 16,000 m2 of seat office and a capacity of over 4000 seats. Appointment booking website can support as many as 125,000 people simultaneously online, concurrent access of 5000 people and visit of 1.5 million people/day. So far, it can meet demand for instant and massive call and online appointment booking service.
Start of Beijing Unified Platform for Appointment Booking is a major measure of Beijing Health Bureau in implementing medical reform requirements and benefiting the public. In future, we will further carry out appointment booking as a priority of the current health care service mechanism reform and make the reform demonstrate Beijing characteristics, benefit the patients and satisfy medical staff.
