(Yicai) July 7 -- Taicang and Zhangjiagang, two cities under the jurisdiction of the economically developed Chinese metropolis of Suzhou, are offering to fully cover the tuition fees of medical students in the area in a bid to bolster healthcare services at community-level hospitals.

In return, the students must commit to working at local grassroots medical institutions for between six and 10 years after they graduate, according to a post on the Suzhou health commission’s WeChat account.

Each sponsored student will receive an annual stipend of CNY10,000 (USD1,400) during their undergraduate studies. They will also get housing subsidies and other benefits after taking up work and buying their first home locally.

Those students who opt in will be selected by the local governments based on their college entrance exam scores. The successful candidates will fall into two groups: those with scores high enough to enter eight-year programs at the country’s 14 top medical schools and those who meet the entry requirements for standard medical schools.

The first group will be cultivated as top talent for local hospitals, while the second will be trained for specialties where there is a local shortage, such as pediatrics and medical imaging.

“To some extent, this initiative is aimed at counterbalancing the siphoning effect of major cities nearby,” a medical researcher at a university in Jiangsu province told Yicai. Due to its close proximity to Shanghai, which is home to some of China’s best hospitals, Suzhou often loses skilled medical professionals and even patients.

“It is easy to add more hospital beds, but training medical professionals can’t happen overnight,” Jin Chunlin, director of Shanghai’s health development research center, told Yicai. For example, Shanghai’s Ruijin Hospital is expected to open a branch in Taicang later this year, and it will need to put a lot of effort into attracting, training, and retaining talent.

Places like Taicang and Zhangjiagang, which have strong economies and can afford to invest in high-level talent, are in a good position to implement policies such as this to lure and retain more medics, Jin added.

Editor: Kim Taylor