No-bribery agreement to be signed in hospitals

Patients and doctors will need to sign a mutual no-bribery agreement before hospitalization, a draft guideline released on Wednesday by the Ministry of Health.

The agreement is a commitment between patients and doctors. After signing the agreement, the patients should not bribe the doctors while the doctors should not receive patients' red envelops. The agreement will be included in the patients' health record.

The draft guideline aims at guarding against any corruption in public hospitals. It is part of the effort to build clean hospitals in the second half of this year.

It also proposed some measures to halt excessive medical treatment and illegal medicine and medical equipment supply.

A mutual commitment to refuse bribe is the basic request for medical organizations and their personnel, and the implementation of the measure can effectively curb the bribery phenomenon that has been widely criticized by the public, said a staff member from a public hospital.