It is a nightmare to get up at 6 am, rush to the hospital by 7 am, wait in the queue for hours and finally manage to see the doctor at 11 am for a five-minute chat. It is no news that critically ill patients, with tubes and medical equipment attached, are discharged due to the limited number of beds available in the hospital, as recently reported in an article in your newspaper. The situation is even worse in first-tier medical institutions.

Patients trust high-ranking hospitals over small clinics. Admittedly, with experienced doctors and advanced facilities, first-tier medical institutions are more appealing to patients with critical diseases who are eager for more reliable treatment. But there is an interesting phenomenon in China. People with minor diseases, sometimes just a bad cold, queue for hours in a crowded high-ranking hospital for an expensive expert.

Frankly speaking, although doctors from small hospitals may not be at sophisticated operations as skilled as their counterparts in bigger institutions, they are qualified and capable enough to treat minor diseases. However, it is a common practice in small institutions that doctors ask their patients to do unnecessary examinations and prescribe them expensive but useless medicines. The more patients pay for their medicines, the larger amount of kickbacks doctors will receive. It sometimes costs hundreds of yuan to cure a cold. Even if patients trust the doctors' medical qualifications, they don't want to be unfairly treated by small hospitals.

Admittedly, higher-ranking medical institutions may also have irresponsible and greedy doctors who care more about their income than their patients, but these hospitals are mostly under tighter supervision, which reduces the likelihood of doctors getting kickbacks. After all, having devoted tremendous effort to improving medical skills and upgrading hardware facilities, top-tier hospitals cannot afford losing their painstakingly-built reputation. Doctors will be investigated and harshly punished if they are found to have had kickbacks.

Patients flood to big hospitals for better treatment, but meanwhile they have to tolerate the crowds and discounted receptions there. Under the circumstances, private hospitals can be a solution and can play a more important role in the medical industry.

An increasing number of patients now prefer private institutions to public ones, and this will help alleviate burdens of the latter. Competition can also prompt public hospitals to enhance their services.

However, private hospitals in China are a luxury for people from ordinary families. While offering good services to patients, private hospitals cost 10 times more than their public counterparts.

A friend of mine chose to give birth to her baby in a private hospital. She really enjoyed the environment there as she didn't have to queue up for doctors, attended weekly tutorials with midwives and had an individual room to stay in after the operation. But the expenses were hideously high - hundreds of thousands of yuan in total.

The authorities can introduce more policies favorable to private institutions to make them affordable for ordinary people.

The separation of medical departments from hospitals may help curb the spread of kickbacks. More individual pharmacies should be encouraged to develop in China. When studying in the UK, I was impressed by the large number of individual pharmacies there. The doctor's clinic I visited didn't sell medicines, and I had to buy the medicines the doctor prescribed at a pharmacy outside the hospital. China can learn from this and choke off medical departments from the hospital to eliminate kickbacks.

The healthcare system in China is far from perfect, and the authorities should strengthen supervision of medical institutions. Sadly, patients who know someone from the hospital can always enjoy prioritized treatment in China - having an extra bed, jumping the queue and being received by experts. Some official intervention is needed to ensure that every patient is fairly treated.

Liu Lulu, a free-lancer based in Beijing