Reforms responsive to increasing variability and
inequalities in health services use could include regulating
and financially encouraging cost effective prescribing
and care performance, establishing more
explicit diagnostic criteria, and better patient supervision
to avoid inappropriate admissions and drug use
in the health care system [20, 33]. On the supply side,
more funding and innovation funding could be directed
to poor areas and improving the primary
health infrastructures in rural area [33]. As was the
case with developments in the West from the 1960s,
primary health care needs to be strengthened with
better identification and treatment of chronic diseases;
and moving more service provision from hospitals to
more cost efficient community care centres (or a family
doctor-led primary care model) with necessary
training support and relocation of staff and resources.
These structural improvements are essential to improve
the efficiency and equity in health services use
in order to decrease the severe use and cost pressures
on hospitals in an ageing society [34–36]. Difficulties
in accessing health services by the ethnic minorities
living in remote rural areas could also be improved
by providing more community health provision and
interventions