Foreigners who had joined the trend to explore their opportunities in China's capital Beijing increasingly found that seeking heath care at a hospital was an uncomfortable experience.

Among others, their complaints included that few staffers at local hospitals could speak foreign languages and the procedure of seeing a doctor was complicated.

In a move to coincide with Beijing's step towards becoming an international metropolis, local authorities have vowed to improve health care for foreigners.

"MARATHON" AT HOSPITALS

Park, 30, of South Korea, has been a student in Beijing for six years. He said he was scared of the marathon-style procedure while seeing a doctor at a Beijing hospital.

"It starts with a time-consuming registration session, and then I need to go all around, with a lot of forms in hand" in the hospital, crowded like a train station, he said.

Park said he could not make himself clear to doctors and nurses sometimes, like when a stomachache was very painful.

And for even a single health check-up, he said he needed to go through a complicated process concerning payments, prescription forms, and shifting between different departments of the hospital. < "I won't see a doctor for small illnesses like a foot sprain here, and if an operation is necessary, I will go back to South Korea," Park said.

Some foreigners believed that many government-funded hospitals in China were marked with uncomfortable facilities, atmosphere and ignorance towards privacy of patients, according to a survey.

The survey, conducted by Wang Yongguang, head of the Institute for Minimally Invasive Medicine of Tongji University, further revealed that the quality of services at private medical units were worrisome in the eyes of many foreigners.

Frowning on the medical services in China, many foreigners choose to go back to their homelands or to other countries for medical treatment.

Gao Jinsong, a senior executive with Det Norske Veritas (DNV) China, said his colleagues would have to go back to Britain or the United States to receive treatment for even small illnesses if China could not provide better health care for foreigners.

"That basically means more expenditure in time and costs," Gao said.

CURRENT CONDITIONS

The lack in multi-lingual medical practitioners, and the medical treatment methods, culture, management system, and insurance scheme, have contributed to the fact that the diversified health care needs of Beijing-based foreigners were not fulfilled, said Zhang Chunxiu, deputy chief of government of Chaoyang District, Beijing.

In Chaoyang, populated by foreign embassies and companies, the number of registered residents with overseas citizenship was over 60,000, or half of that total number in Beijing.

Currently, there are only a very limited number of medical organizations with professional medical service for foreigners in China, according to officials.

Statistics showed that among over 6,400 registered medical organizations in Beijing, less than 20 are able to serve foreigners, including only two top level hospitals, the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Peking Union Medical College Hospital.

Less than 200 doctors can provide medical services with multi-languages for foreigners, whose number stood at 110,000 in the capital city.

Further, only 20 of Beijing's hospitals accepted payment through commercial medical insurance schemes which are popular outside China.

BETTER FUTURE

Overseas citizens in Beijing accounted for 0.6 percent of the city's population in 2009, while that ratio stood at 30 percent in London and 28.4 percent in New York.

Analysts feared that with Beijing progressing towards an even more internationalized metropolis and more foreigners flowing into the city, the current already bad situation concerning health care for foreigners could worsen.

Fang Laiying, head of the health bureau in Beijing, said that the capital city will surely form an all-around health care system that ensures universal access to basic medical services as well as providing multi-mode services to meet diversified needs of different groups, including foreigners.

Beijing's Chaoyang district would introduce high-end medical organizations targeting overseas citizens in its central business district (CBD) and foreign embassy areas, according to health authorities in the district.

The Institute for Minimally Invasive Medicine of Tongji University planned to establish a medical center in Chaoyang to provide "family doctors clinic" services, which would specially target foreigners in China.