[Video] Tongzhou District Health Bureau of Beijing banned self-service dialysis room for uremia patients.
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CCTV News (news 30 minutes): Recently, an ordinary farmhouse in Baimiao Village, Tongzhou District, Beijing has attracted a lot of media attention. There, ten uremic patients bought three second-hand hemodialysis machines and built a self-service dialysis room because they couldn’t afford the high dialysis fees in regular hospitals. Among the ten patients, some people have been living on such self-help dialysis for three or four years.
This is a quiet farmhouse, and the sound of three dialysis machines running is particularly clear. Ten uremic patients have little contact with villagers, and they have lived in almost seclusion for four years. But a few days ago, some media reported their situation, which attracted the attention of local government departments. On the way to our interview, the staff of Tongzhou District Health Bureau, Food and Drug Administration, Public Security Bureau and other departments suddenly went to the clinic and issued a notice of banning ten uremia patients. This caused quite a stir in the small courtyard.
For uremia patients, if they don’t have dialysis for a few days, their lives may be in danger. Hearing that the local health bureau wouldn’t let them have dialysis, the patients began to panic. Wei Qiang is one of the founders of the small courtyard. It is not the first time that he has been investigated by the government. Their self-service dialysis room was first set up in sanhe city, Hebei Province.
After being investigated by sanhe city, Wei Qiang and others had to move to Baimiao Village in Tongzhou (District). In fact, Tongzhou District Health Bureau also knows that these uremic patients only save themselves rather than make profits, so they didn’t really confiscate their dialysis machines.
We saw that there was no rescue equipment in the small courtyard except for three dialysis machines and a water processor that a dialysis machine must have. In fact, all patients in the small courtyard know that self-help dialysis is very risky in such a simple environment, and death may occur at any time, but Wei Qiang said that it is by such self-help dialysis that the small courtyard saved our lives.
Wei Qiang was originally a fruit merchant in Siziwangqi, Inner Mongolia, and was diagnosed with uremia in 2004. After living in the hospital for a year, it cost more than 80 thousand yuan, and Wei Qiang could no longer pay for dialysis. In desperation, he and several patients figured it was better to borrow some money to buy a dialysis machine. In 2006, he spent more than 90,000 yuan to buy a second-hand dialysis machine and officially started his self-service dialysis life.
Later, more and more uremic patients knew about the self-service dialysis room, and many people joined the team. Li Lidan, the youngest patient, said that the biggest advantage of dialysis in a small courtyard is that it is cheap. It only costs 100 yuan to do dialysis, and she can do it every three days. Unlike in the past, a dialysis in the hospital cost 500 to 600 yuan, and she would only do it once because she was too uncomfortable.
The small hospital adopts the mode of sharing the cost equally. Each member needs to pay 20,000 yuan for the equipment at one time, and the consumables such as drugs used for each dialysis are used separately. Daily expenses such as housing, water and electricity, and the salary of a nurse are also shared equally by patients. With the increase of patients in the small courtyard, everyone’s cost is getting lower and lower. After getting along with several patients for several years, they all regard the small courtyard as their home.
Once uremia patients start dialysis, they can’t stop. The patients in the small courtyard say that in addition to the help of relatives and friends, the civil affairs department also gives some low premiums, but we find that there is an important link missing, medical insurance reimbursement.
No reimbursement or low reimbursement rate is an important reason why patients leave regular hospitals and choose small hospitals for dialysis. They said that if there is a higher medical insurance reimbursement, the cost will be almost the same as that of a small hospital, and they will definitely choose to go back to a hospital with low medical risk for dialysis.
In 2008, sanhe city, Hebei Province implemented a free dialysis policy for local uremic patients, and four or five patients from sanhe city left the small courtyard at once. Wei Qiang said that although he can’t enjoy medical insurance reimbursement yet, he also feels that the medical insurance policy is changing quietly. Therefore, he has not been home for four or five years and has some expectations for the future.
The feeling of the patients in the small courtyard is right. In 2009, the national new medical reform plan will be announced soon. According to experts, the dialysis problem of uremia patients will be included in the scope of medical insurance in the future, and the intervention and treatment of chronic diseases will be undertaken by community health institutions, which means that uremia patients no longer have to travel all the way to Beijing for dialysis, and they can find dialysis machines in community hospitals near their homes.
Editor: Li Xian