Challenges and Pathways in Medical Management Under the New Healthcare System

Medical administration is defined here as the monitoring, guidance, and coordination of hospital diagnosis and treatment, medical activities, legal issues, and medical disputes by a dedicated department, usually the medical affairs department. Hence, medical administration is a crucial component in hospital management. Moreover, the quality of medical administration largely determines the capacity of a hospital to provide public health services. Under the new healthcare system in China, characterized by hierarchical diagnosis and treatment, diagnosis-related group/diagnosis-intervention packet (DRG/DIP) payment reform, the national performance appraisal of public hospitals, and the promotion of the Sanming model, rapid advances in medical technology, continued expansion of hospital capacity, and the increasing specialization of services have broadened the scope of medical administration and made the associated quality standards more complex. These developments have placed greater demands on medical administration. Subsequently, hospitals must further strengthen standardized management, improve work processes and management mechanisms, and continuously enhance the quality of medical administration. This article is a narrative commentary and expert perspective, rather than an empirical study, which aims to (1) characterize the current content and scope of hospital medical administration, (2) synthesize the three major challenges facing medical administration under the new healthcare system in China, and (3) propose concrete, indicator-linked pathways for optimization. Therefore, the article examines these three major challenges and applies an analytical framework that combines policy document analysis with a narrative synthesis of peer-reviewed literature published from 2015 to 2025 and retrieved from PubMed, CNKI, and Web of Science, using keywords such as “medical administration”, “medical quality”, “patient safety”, and “hospital management in China”. The article then proposes approaches to optimize medical administration from organizational and system management perspectives, with the aim of providing practical guidance and promoting the healthy development of the healthcare industry.