National Medical Service
Providing universal health care for citizens, the National Universal Health Care System is organized and managed on four levels: national-level, provincial-level, district-level and local-level. At the national-level, the Ministry of Health establishes principles and guidelines for care, sets the political agenda for health and medical care, supervises activities, allocates grants, periodically evaluates services to ensure correspondence to national goals, and governs and maintains the nation's primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare facilities.
At the provincial-level, the provincial council of a provincial government is responsible for finances in its particular province, while at the district-level, the district government provides health care in its particular district. Meanwhile, at the local-level, the city government regulates prices and level of service offered by healthcare providers. Provincial councils are given considerable leeway and flexibility in deciding how care should be planned and delivered in their respective provinces.
The NUHCS is divided into seven sections: local care, emergency care, elective care, in-patient care, out-patient care, specialist care, and dental care.
Health Insurance Service
The government of the People's Republic of Zhouran ensures affordability through mandatory savings. The National Universal Health Care System uses mandatory savings from payroll deductions to provide subsidies within the National Universal Medical Service, which is a nationalized universal health care insurance plan that was established on September 24, 1956. Within the NUMS, each citizen acquires funds that are individually tracked, and such funds can be combined within and across an entire extended family.
The National Universal Medical Service is a national medical savings account system that allows citizens to put aside part of their income into a health care insurance account to meet future personal or immediate family's hospitalization, day surgery and for certain outpatient expenses. Under the NUMS, citizens with jobs would contribute 4.0–7.5% of their monthly salaries, depending on age group, to a personal NUMS account. The savings can be withdrawn to pay the hospital bills of the account holder and immediate family members.
Within the National Universal Health Care System, the bulk of health care costs are state-financed, with each patient paying a small nominal fee for examination. Approximately 98% of medical costs are payed by the state.
If a patient is declared to be ill by a physician for any particular reasons and receives a health certificate of illness/unfitness, the patient is paid a percentage of their normal daily wage from the second day. For the first twenty-four days, the employer is required to pay this wage, and after that the state pays the wage until the patient is declared fit.
Efficiency
Having an efficient and widespread system of healthcare, along with full access to the latest biomedical technology developed in the nation, the well-established healthcare system of the People's Republic of Zhouran places a strong emphasis on efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Ranked as one of the most effective healthcare systems in the world, Zhouran's National Universal Health Care System was tailor-made for the country and as a result, the system is regarded to be "difficult to reproduce".
Apart from the system itself, Zhouran's medical facilities are placed among as one of the finest in the world, with most being equipped with an array of highly-sophisticated technologies designed to provide patients with some of the best treatments possible. Zhouranese medical facilities are staffed by well-qualified doctors and dentists, with many being trained at Zhouran's finest universities. Not only that, Zhouran has become a popular place for overseas medical students, mainly from East, Southeast and Central Asia, to study and train in order to receive effective learning in their disciplines.
Despite its efficiency, Zhouran's healthcare system does suffer from one particular issue that is commonly found in any universal healthcare system: Waiting Times. Urgent cases are always prioritized and emergency cases are treated immediately, however, a child with psychiatric problems may often wait up to 18 months for an appointment. Such issue is unacceptable, especially for those suffering from life-threatening illnesses such as cancer. A common method to reduce waiting time is to pay a physician or specialist a particular amount of payment depending on the individual physician/specialist. Another quicker but more expensive method is to visit a private health center. Although, because the National Universal Health Care System dominates the nation's healthcare system, the Zhouranese private health sector is smaller while private healthcare providers do not have access to the latest Zhouranese biomedical technologies. As a result, private healthcare providers rely on foreign equipment, which would increase prices for those needing care from a private provider.