Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, March 11 (Reporter Xu Penghang) The reporter learned from the National Health Insurance Administration on the 11th that as of the end of February, a total of 103 coordinated areas across the country have carried out instant settlements, accounting for 26% of the total number of coordinated areas, covering 43,700 designated medical institutions and 67,600 designated pharmacies, and the amount of instant settlement allocation was 38.731 billion yuan.

For a long time, "slow payment collection" has been a long-standing problem in the medical field. On January 9 this year, the National Medical Insurance Administration issued the "Notice on Promoting the Reform of Real-time Settlement of Basic Medical Insurance Funds", requiring all provinces to strictly implement prepayment of medical insurance funds and promote real-time settlement.

It is reported that 79 coordinated areas have further increased the allocation frequency on the basis of shortening the monthly settlement time. For example, Anhui Province summarizes hospitalization expenses one by one, and allocates them to hospitals at a rate of 60% the next day; Xiamen City, Fujian Province adopts the form of "daily report, daily review, and daily allocation" to shorten the fund allocation time limit to a minimum of 1 working day. In addition, some coordinated areas have also explored the classification and determination of settlement time limits for medical institutions. For example, according to the performance appraisal results of medical institutions, settlement will be carried out in 1, 3 and 7 days.

At the same time, 61 coordinated regions have chosen to expand the scope of instant settlement, expanding the scope of instant settlement funds from basic medical insurance funds to serious illness insurance funds or medical assistance funds.

In addition, fund prepayment and instant settlement are synergistically empowered. As of the end of February, 29 provinces have established an advance payment system, and 17 provinces have prepaid basic medical insurance funds of 48.4 billion yuan (including 32.6 billion yuan in employee medical insurance funds and 15.8 billion yuan in residents' medical insurance funds). Other eligible coordinated areas will complete the allocation before the end of March.

The National Health Insurance Administration stated that instant settlement has increased the cash flow of medical institutions, alleviated the pressure on advance payments for medical institutions, empowered and helped the sustainable development of hospitals, and promoted designated medical institutions to accelerate the collection of funds for pharmaceutical companies, and promoted the improvement of the overall capital turnover efficiency of the pharmaceutical industry.