Shanghai Ruijin Hospital unveils 9 national medical centers

Celebrating its 119th anniversary on Tuesday, Shanghai Ruijin Hospital officially unveiled its nine national medical centers, addressing the need to reorganize healthcare as diseases have become increasingly complex today.

These centers are the Oncology Center, EPAT Endocrine Tumor Center, Cardiac Center, Liver Center, Colorectal Center, Complex Respiratory Disease Center, Urolithiasis Center, Critical Care Center, and Trauma Center.

The hospital stated that the most fundamental change brought about by the establishment of the centers is the shift from patients maneuvering among different departments to doctors revolving around patients.

Ning Guang, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Ruijin Hospital, which is affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, explained that as medicine continues to develop, the interdisciplinary integration of fields is deepening, making it increasingly hard for single departments to manage disease diagnosis and treatment. This requires the collaboration of more specialized forces.

"Breaking the hospital's original department-based organizational structure and establishing a new medical service system based on treatment centers is a direction that we have been striving for," he said.

The nine centers focus on the diagnosis and treatment needs of major diseases and complex conditions. They integrate relevant clinical departments, technical platforms, and medical resources, promoting a shift in the hospital's treatment model from being department-based to being centered on patients and diseases.

For example, experts explained that the Oncology Center integrates five core clinical departments — radiation therapy, medical oncology, interventional radiology, nuclear medicine, and radiology — to build a one-stop, non-surgical oncology treatment system.

Within this system, patients' information regarding diagnosis and treatment, medical equipment, and expert resources are shared. Doctors from relevant disciplines conduct joint assessments based on tumor type, disease stage, and patient condition, coordinating radiation therapy, drug therapy, and interventional therapy to develop individualized comprehensive treatment plans for patients.

As cancer is gradually regarded as a major chronic disease for prevention and treatment, the hospital said it is also making multifaceted efforts to move toward the direction of viewing patients' hospital discharge not as the end point, but as a new starting point for long-term health management.