Summary of Key Points
This article argues that the fact that the admission scores for clinical medicine have been surpassed by those for veterinary medicine is not a sign of the collapse of the healthcare system, but rather a “crisis” as China’s medical sector matures. The author points out that in the past, the healthcare system wasted top-tier talents on repetitive tasks. The current change in admission scores is a signal that the market is correcting these misalignments and driving a transformation towards more engineered and standardized practices. In the future, routine medical care will rely on skilled professionals combined with AI to ensure quality, while top talents will move to the industrial sector to create greater value. As a result, hospitals will be forced to reform their operational models, ultimately leading to a mature healthcare system that does not depend on “miracle doctors.”
1. Ending the Misalignment of Talents: Stop Locking Geniuses in Outpatient Processes
For decades, public hospitals have used low salaries and moral appeals to attract the most intelligent students to pursue medicine. However, 99% of clinical work involves standardized procedures (such as prescribing medications according to guidelines, performing routine surgeries, and writing medical records), which do not require the innovative abilities of top students. It is a waste of intellectual resources to confine talented individuals who are capable of conducting research to outpatient tasks that are often repetitive and to force them to produce research papers.
Now, the veterinary medicine program, with its market-based pricing (higher salaries) and emotional value (the respect associated with saving pets), is attracting higher-scoring candidates. The return of clinical medicine scores to a more normal range indicates that the market is correcting this misalignment. After all, routine medical care does not require a team of geniuses; freeing these exceptional individuals from repetitive work is a sign of progress.
2. AI as a Backup: Ordinary Doctors Can Reach Expert Levels
Some worry that declining scores will lead to a decline in the quality of primary care, but AI can help address this issue. The advantage of AI is that it can compress all known medical knowledge into standardized tools that can help ordinary doctors bridge their experience gaps. For example, experiments at Stanford University using GPT-4 to assist in diagnoses showed an average improvement of 6.5% in accuracy, indicating that AI can elevate the level of even less experienced doctors.
In the future, doctors will no longer need to memorize large amounts of information; their core skills will be effective communication with patients, understanding their needs, and proficiency in using AI tools. They simply need to be stable, reliable, and empathetic.
3. The Flow of Top Talents to the Industrial Sector
Where have all the most intelligent medical students gone? They haven’t disappeared; they have moved to innovative pharmaceutical companies, healthcare technology firms, and venture capital industries. For instance, McKinsey reports show that top doctors in the United States have long since left traditional hospitals to work in the industrial sector, where they can apply their expertise to develop cutting-edge medical solutions (such as new drugs and AI-powered medical tools), thereby transforming the entire healthcare model.
This is not a negative development. China’s top talents can enhance the efficiency of healthcare at a higher level, while those who truly wish to become doctors will return with interdisciplinary skills (in areas like computer science and biology) to become “medical scientists” capable of solving complex medical problems.
4. Forcing Hospital Reforms: Management Gaps Cannot Be Masked by Relying on Geniuses
In the past, hospitals relied on highly skilled but low-paid doctors to compensate for poor management practices (such as excessive administrative tasks that consumed doctors’ time). With fewer high-scoring candidates available, hospitals must reform:
- Lean Operations: Eliminate inefficient processes to free up doctors’ time for patient care.
- Dual Talent Systems: Ordinary doctors (skilled practitioners) can earn stable incomes through medical partnerships and per-person payment models, while a small number of researchers can receive higher rewards by solving complex medical problems and translating research findings into practical applications.
5. Removing the Myth: The Healthcare System Can Truly Mature
Just as individuals grow and develop, the healthcare system must shed the myth that it must always recruit the highest-scoring candidates. With a population of 1.4 billion in China, the real issue is not a shortage of “miracle doctors” but the need to establish a robust, efficient system that does not rely on any one individual. This system should honor the skills of skilled practitioners and encourage researchers to explore the limits of medical science. Only when we stop using college entrance exam scores as the sole measure of healthcare quality can we truly enter a mature healthcare society.
In summary: These changes in admission scores are not a bad thing; they represent a necessary transition for the healthcare system from relying on individual geniuses to relying on a combination of systems and AI. Ultimately, this will enable more people to access stable and reliable medical services.