Made for China by Christian Nothhaft

Author:Christian Nothhaft
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

However, while between 2005 and 2015 the number of visits to public hospitals doubled to 2.7 billion (two per capita per annum), visits to private hospitals increased fivefold to 370 million visits, reflecting a growing middle class and wealthy citizens’ preference for treatment at private hospitals.3

The development of private dental clinics and hospitals is a good example of the growth of private healthcare over the past three decades. Before 1980, only two types of facilities were licensed to provide dental care—the dentistry departments of general hospitals, and stomatology hospitals. Small, private dental clinics began emerging when private ownership was allowed after 1980. However, many of them weren’t licensed.

By the early 1990s, private capital was allowed to contract and operate in the stomatology departments of public hospitals. During this period, government policies on private investment in public healthcare facilities went back and forth. The regulatory environment for private dental care was unstable and varied according to regional and local authorities’ interpretations and enforcement of policies.

Then, the market entered into a new era when the central government reaffirmed its stance on supporting a “completely market-driven” hospital reform, starting with local-level hospitals, in 2000.4 Independent, private dental care providers have since enjoyed rapid development. Currently, there are 65,000 private dental clinics and 187 private stomatology hospitals across China. Operating more than 200 clinics (10–15 dental chairs each) and hospitals (over 30 dental chairs each) in close to 50 cities in China, the BYBO Dental Group is one of the most successful players on the market.

Mr. Li, the founder and Chairman of the BYBO Dental Group, believes China offers tremendous market opportunities and “can hold thousands more clinics.” His reasoning: the UK is a country with a population of only 63 million, but it has over 10,000 dental clinics. Taiwan, with a population of 23 million, has 6300 clinics. “The demand is there. Clinics are often surrounded by competitors, but they all manage to survive,” says Li.

Another indicator of market potential is the ratio between the number of dentists to the total population. In developed countries, there is one dentist for every 500–1000 residents. As shown in Table 13.1, in China, there is less than one dentist for every 10,000 residents. People usually use the one million population to one dentist ratio to show the market potential, and as you can see from the table below, there is massive room for growth in this industry (see Table 13.1).Table 13.1Number of dentists vs. population

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