UMP Healthcare’s GOLD™ Training Program joins the roster of winners in Healthcare Asia Awards 2021

The company took home the Primary Care Provider of the Year (China) trophy this year.

UMP Healthcare Holdings Limited (722.HK) has been offering trusted and affordable healthcare services for everyone to freely pursue their dreams without worrying about their health for 30 years now. This vision has been firmly etched in their values and commitment as a leading medical and healthcare platform.

However, their responsibility not only extends across patients but also to medical practitioners as well.

In line with the state policy in Mainland China, UMP Healthcare China Limited has been developing family doctor training in major Chinese cities and establishing public-private-partnership (PPP) UMP medical centres with community health centers of various regional governments in the Greater Bay Area. 

China’s primary healthcare has been undergoing reform over these last few years. The general public is directly going to hospitals for minor ailments and common chronic problems instead of their General Practitioners (GPs), due in part to mistrust, GPs’ seeming incapability, and overall perceived lower qualities in primary care infrastructure. As a result, China’s GPs are underpaid and under-recognised. 

China has only initiated its vocational GP training program in recent years. However, most training is led by hospital specialists, who naturally have little experience in handling common primary care problems. In addition, training is traditionally didactic, and assessment is mainly knowledge-based with minimal practical orientation. 

UMP is a major Health Maintenance Organisation (HMO) service provider in Hong Kong and began to provide services in China over ten years ago. The lack of appropriately-trained family doctors proved to be a major hurdle in developing a strong HMO network in China. 

To address the root of the problem, UMP established the General Practice-Oriented Learning and Development (GOLD™) program to enhance public confidence in GPs and public trust in the quality of community-based primary care. 

GOLD™ Training Program provides up-to-date, evidence-based and practical training that is localised for GPs in China. Its uniqueness and practicality has achieved accreditation by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), and was quickly recognised by Chinese local municipal governments. The program’s number of trainees rose from an original 11 GPs from Panyu district in the Greater Bay Area in 2018, to now over 1,000 GPs and nurses across China. 

The GOLD™ Training Program has provided China GPs with a unique opportunity to enhance their skills and to translate their immense knowledge base to provide patient-centered care to the general population, which will in turn improve their self-confidence and social status. 

Moreover, UMP’s online training has become even more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company developed a telemedicine platform in China in 2019 that promotes a seamless transition for patients to see GOLD™-trained doctors online and offline. Today, their training has now been extended to Myanmar and Thailand, where there is a huge demand for improvement in primary care.

These accomplishments—together with the GOLD™ Training Program’s success despite the pandemic—have further solidified UMP as the winner of Healthcare Asia’s Primary Care Provider of the Year (China) award for 2021.

Moving forward, UMP believes that training alone will not be sufficient to address China’s existing problems. UMP-branded PPP clinics have been set up in over 100 government community primary care centres across the Greater Bay Area. HMO clients can now visit these high-quality clinics manned by trained family doctors. 

In the long run, public healthcare costs can be reduced, GOLD™-trained doctors have a better experience, and because of HMO will receive better remunerations. The general public will also see for themselves the high qualities of well-trained GPs, thus completely overhauling the present negative impressions. 

Hear from their senior vice president, chief training officer, and chief medical director, Dr. Kenny Kung as he talks about their remarkable training program known as the General Practice Oriented Learning and Development (GOLD) as it aims to provide proper training and enhance the skills of general practitioners particularly in China that creates more developed healthcare in the country.