Nashville-based China Healthcare Corp. said that locally based Gresham Smith Partners along with the Shanghai Institute for Architecture Design and Research are designing the 500-bed hospital planned for Cixi, a city of nearly 2 million people 100 miles south of Shanghai.
Earlier this year, China Healthcare received final government approval for the acute-care hospital that would replace the 150-bed People's #2 Hospital. It owns a 70 percent stake in the joint venture and the Cixi government owns 30 percent.
The new hospital would blend the best of Western health care with the best of the East, said Chuck Elcan, chief executive of China Healthcare.
"We look forward to working with Cixi government officials to bring new services and additional capacity to serve the people of Cixi and surrounding areas," he said.
Elcan started China Healthcare more than a year ago with his father-in-law, Dr. Thomas F. Frist Jr., a co-founder of hospital operator HCA Inc.; and Henry Zhou.
Last year, Elcan said the founding group saw an opportunity to take U.S.-style hospital management to China.
On Monday, China Healthcare said it has started to assemble an experienced management team for the Cixi hospital and is exploring other opportunities in China.
Tsung-Mei Cheng, a health policy analyst in Princeton, N.J., said there could be more opportunities for the private sector as China's government has increased its health-care budget for the next three years by $124 billion. That includes more money to improve access to hospital care by building new facilities in underserved areas, officials said.
Cheng, however, doesn't expect full-scale privatization of hospitals because China's previous attempt at reform using a market-based approach failed during the 1990s.
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