Beijing plans to build a community health service system in 2008 that will cover all its urban and rural residents. Beijing residents will soon be able to enjoy house call service from community doctors in the future as the city's community health service workers will walk out of their clinics and bring services to people's homes.

"Every family and resident in the city will have their own family doctor and our community health service will cover all community households in Beijing." said Liang Wannian, depurty director of the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau, at a working conference on Wednesday.

The "Family-doctor-house-call" system will cover all permanent urban and rural residents in Beijing and those who have lived in the city for half a year or more.

The medical system will be conducted by medical teams that include family doctors, nurses and health-care specialists. Each team will take care of about 800 to 1,000 households on average.

Many community health service centers will be established according to the plan. A 24-7 hotline will also be set up at each community health service center and doctors can make house visits when called.

Medical workers in the community health service center will distribute their contact information during their house calls and establish a family health record for each household. In order to make sure that doctors can reach the patients in time, the municipal government equipped them with electric bikes.

The conference also revealed that the government would expand the scale and ratio of reimbursement of medical expenses from community health services starting 2008. Those who have the medical insurance can enjoy a 70 percent reimbursement rate for the community health services they receive. The list of drugs in community health centers will also be expanded.

Liang admitted that the current community medical force of over 20,000 are not enough to cover all the communities in the city, but he said the government will make more efforts at reinforcing the community medical teams. More medical college graduates will be assigned to the community health centers and more retired medical experts from hospitals will be re-employed at community health centers.

The city's hospitals will also send supporting teams of experienced doctors down to the grassroots units of each community health center to boost their effectiveness.

According to Liang, doctors' house visits can give detailed guidance to the residents on their health conditions and on the prevention or cure of diseases. Such services are especially effective against chronicle diseases, which have been a major threat to people's health.

In order to make the community health centers easy to find, the Municipal Health Bureau has negotiated with the city's Traffic Management Bureau to set up signposts around the city and its suburbs.

Detailed maps of each community health center will be distributed next year. Calendars with the maps will also be available.

The house call service will also have preferential policies for the elderly and the poor.