Just got back last night from a 3.5 day trip out to Chengdu to attend a Healthcare CIO conference. Aside from Beijing and Shenzhen, Chengdu is the Chinese city that I have visited the most, since there is a massive site out there where I’ve done some training and slacking. Last year I also tagged along on a market study of internet cafes, which was a totally cool and new experience for me. I was able to sit behind a one-way screen while watching people being interviewed by a 3rd party market research firm. After seeing the researcher ask the same questions over and over and over and over again, I happily discarded any ambitions toward a career in market research and decided instead that my perfect job would involve always sitting behind a one-way mirror – and watching the world go by in voyeuristic ecstasy, all the while crunching down on watermelon seeds and Chinese yogurt drinks.
Work aside, what I love best about Chengdu is the food, of course. Somewhere along the ragged evolution of my appetite, I fell in love with the nastier underbelly of Sichuan cuisine; the globs of duck blood, intestines, freshwater eel and pieces of other savory river slime are what come to mind whenever I think about the second tier city. Oh yes, and also Keith in his bathrobe from when we vacationed there last May. This trip, however, I was cursed with having to escort some of my American corporate partners on their first and last nights in town, which wouldn’t normally be an issue except for the fact that one of them owned two very important characteristics that affected my dining experience:
-
- He didn’t heat fish, lamb, duck, pork, beef, prawn, crab, or eel
- My direct bosses were waiting to hear from him on my performance at the conference
This is how David (who flew in from Beijing to partner with me on the event) and I, both intense lovers of red hot spicy Sichuanese food, found ourselves at a Shanghainese restaurant eating tofu skins and vegetarian noodles. Blech.
Food aside, the conference went very well. We got a lot of good feedback on the economic model that we were trying to convince them was worth implementing as they assessed their healthcare IT investments. One wonderful trait about all these purported leaders of the Chinese healthcare industry is that, like the rest of the population, a majority of them enjoy smoking. And free flash memory thumb drives.
Another commonality was the sheer unabashed way in which they admitted that increasing revenue and profit was by far what they and their fellow administrators valued…yes, even above patient safety and quality of care. On one hand, I love how they shove aside pretense and expose the true incentives of those who helm the industry; I wish healthcare executives in the US could talk in these frank and welcome terms. On the other hand, I STILL hope I never have to end up at a Chinese hospital for anything other than free Xanax.
More thoughts on China healthcare to come…
