Harbin City in Heilongjiang Province boasts abundant medical resources, with numerous top-tier hospitals and specialized facilities concentrated in the urban area. The number of hospital beds per thousand people ranks among the highest in provincial capitals nationwide. As the largest municipal-level tertiary general hospital with a 113-year history, how does Harbin First Hospital distinguish itself within the healthcare system to achieve higher-quality development? President Yan Hongwei recently explained that the hospital pioneered comprehensive public hospital reforms in Harbin, focusing on systemic innovation, technological breakthroughs, and management upgrades. By enhancing discipline development, optimizing operational mechanisms, and improving service efficiency, the hospital has achieved dual improvements in both scale and quality. In recent years, outpatient, emergency, and inpatient volumes have increased annually, with patient satisfaction consistently exceeding 98%.
Under President Yan Hongwei's leadership, innovation-driven development has created a new growth pattern. He emphasized that high-quality development hinges on intrinsic capacity building, with discipline development serving as the core competitiveness and essential path for hospital improvement. As a central urban hospital, Harbin First Hospital accelerates the transformation of medical research成果 into clinical applications of new technologies, medications, and equipment through discipline development, addressing the most urgent healthcare needs of the community. To achieve high-quality development, the hospital aims to play a leading role in specific disciplines or disease treatment systems. Anchored in public demand and targeting prevalent diseases in Northeast China, the hospital continuously improves discipline development through technological innovation. Since 2024, the hospital has added two provincial key specialties—psychiatry and general practice—along with five municipal key specialties including pathology and critical care medicine, reversing the slow growth trend of key specialties over the past decade. The hospital has adopted a strategy where specialized disease treatment drives specialty development, which in turn promotes hospital-wide growth, focusing on cultivating key specialties. Additionally, the hospital successfully applied for one municipal key talent development project and participated in one national key science and technology project, injecting new momentum into discipline development.
This year, the hospital fully advanced its high-quality development project, establishing three specialized treatment centers by integrating disciplinary resources to achieve leapfrog improvements in medical service capabilities. The first is the Pulmonary Nodule Center. The hospital is enhancing its pulmonary nodule diagnosis and treatment capabilities, planning to establish a specialist alliance with Professor Zhao Jun's team from the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in 2025. They have conducted over 130 multidisciplinary team consultations and performed 37 complex thoracic surgeries. Collaborations with county-level hospitals in Yanshou and Mulan promote the下沉 of medical resources. In 2026, the hospital introduced ultra-high-end CT equipment for intelligent quantitative imaging diagnosis. Future plans include establishing big data archives and integrating engineering with artificial intelligence to create a regionally leading research hub.
The second center is the Pan-Vascular Center. Given the high incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in Northeast China, the hospital established Harbin's first Pan-Vascular Disease Management Center, adopting a patient-centered, health-promoting approach for comprehensive, full-cycle management. By integrating cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and peripheral vascular disciplines, the center provides "one-stop" diagnosis and treatment, advancing standardized care, scientific innovation, and personalized services. The hospital purchased new vascular intervention equipment, aiming to resolve multiple issues in a single procedure for eligible patients, reducing treatment costs. The outpatient department is operational with integrated online and offline services, and基层分中心 construction is progressing orderly. The hospital will lead a regional pan-vascular disease management alliance to establish standardized treatment pathways.
The third center is the High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Minimally/Non-Invasive Treatment Center. Responding to growing patient demand for minimally invasive treatments, the hospital introduced a focused ultrasound tumor treatment system, the first comprehensive machine in the province capable of treating benign and malignant tumors across various body parts. The center will focus on gynecology and other disciplines, covering common conditions like uterine fibroids and adenomyosis, while expanding to breast surgery, hepatobiliary-pancreatic surgery, and orthopedics for solid tumor treatment. Talent preparation is complete, and the focused ultrasound system will soon be operational, significantly improving patient experience.
The hospital has accumulated substantial experience in advancing "specialized disease-specialty" development, with innovative technologies filling regional gaps and achieving qualitative leaps. In advanced technical areas, bronchoscopy comprehensive interventional therapy for central airway tumors leads the three northeastern provinces. Complex general surgery abdominal procedures hit a 20-year high. The hospital pioneered the introduction of domestic surgical robots in Harbin, increasing urology robot-assisted complex surgeries by 50% annually, successfully performing nearly 100 difficult urological operations. It completed Harbin's first combined "heart-brain" interventional surgery and the hospital's first laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy. Metabolic and bariatric surgery volumes rank first in the province and among the top nationally.
To strengthen specialty capabilities, the hospital pursues a "renowned specialties + renowned hospital" strategy, initiating national key specialty construction in neurosurgery. Deepening collaborations with top hospitals like Beijing Tiantan Hospital and Sanbo Brain Hospital, the hospital plans to build a high-level national talent梯队 within two years through remote consultations and flexible talent introduction. An annual fund of 1 million yuan supports talent and platform development, focusing on前沿 technologies like neurointervention and brain-computer interfaces. The hospital leverages its specialty advantages by forming alliances with leading institutions such as the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Renji Hospital, establishing new specialist partnerships with Peking University Third Hospital to integrate high-end resources and upgrade disciplines. This "inviting in" approach allows local residents to access high-level medical services.
With ongoing healthcare reform and insurance payment changes, hospitals face significant operational pressures. Harbin First Hospital focuses on operational management, building a scientific, standardized, and refined system. As one of Harbin's first DRG payment pilot units, the hospital incorporates CMI values into performance evaluations, optimizing case mix and improving treatment efficiency, significantly reducing average hospital stays. Over five years, drug and consumable ratios decreased by 2.74 and 5.75 percentage points from historical peaks, reducing patient burdens. A "one-stop" insurance service station has served over 60,000 people. The hospital ensures medication supply, strictly manages prescriptions, and adds traditional Chinese medicine and chronic disease clinics, optimizing dual-channel drug supply mechanisms, serving 58,740 patients annually.
To enhance operational management, the hospital adopts "revenue generation, cost reduction, and supervision" as key strategies, promoting business-finance integration, cost control, and performance optimization to support equipment upgrades and staff benefits. In 2024, an operational team was formed, with senior financial and insurance officials trained in Shanghai. The innovative specialty operation assistant system recruits clinical骨干 for management, with ten assistants selected to form a复合型 team. Each assistant will oversee one or more departments, evaluating new equipment purchases and technology introductions based on budget, depreciation, maintenance, and pricing, scientifically assessing input-output relationships for refined management.
The hospital will establish a medical equipment sharing service center to coordinate全院设备 allocation. Promoting a sharing concept, the center will distribute equipment based on department usage frequency to maximize efficiency and reduce costs. Future integration of IoT technology will enable集约化, visible management for scientific调配.
Addressing public needs for convenient and accessible healthcare, the hospital continuously optimizes service processes, upgrading outpatient layout to "two centers, six clinics," and improving north-south campus arrangements. It established a cardiac rehabilitation center, digital multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment center, health management clinic, sleep呼吸disease clinic, and pioneered weight management and gastroesophageal reflux specialty clinics. Innovative nursing clinics and woundostomy studios transitioned from "specialized treatment" to "one-stop" services, significantly reducing wait times. Six specialty clinics serve 28,000 patients annually, with the digital multidisciplinary consultation center ensuring 48-hour对接 for complex cases. The city's first no-companion care ward has served 191 patients with zero errors, creating a replicable nursing model.
Outpatient services implement precise time-slot appointments to minimize patient time in hospital. For MRI scans, the hospital contacts patients individually to schedule arrivals, greatly reducing waits. Inpatient examinations are scheduled evenings to free daytime slots for outpatients. Self-service payment machines on all floors now support facial recognition payments. Payment windows were redesigned as open counters for better patient-staff interaction. The hospital also manages patient flow by reorganizing functional areas, such as placing ultrasound rooms near gynecology clinics. Over 18 months, average visit time dropped by 20 minutes. Convenience stations provide sewing kits, reading glasses, and seasonal health drinks like ginger tea, delivering patient-centered care.
The hospital developed an online platform with 310 doctors providing 40,000 consultations and 77 science broadcasts over three years. It actively supports基层医疗资源in district and county hospitals, strengthening a regional medical alliance with 101 members through "contract + service" cooperation. Two-way referral channels facilitated 66 staff deployments in 2025, handling 3,292 outpatient visits and 146 surgeries. Six "Heilongjiang Famous Doctor" studios benefited nearly 1,000 county residents. Over three years, 278 health outreach events involved 1,614 medical staff, serving 240,000 people.