HEALTH is the very foundation of people’s livelihood and an im­portant symbol of Shanghai’s progress towards becoming an outstanding global city.

As a leader of China’s private medical institutions, United Family Healthcare has become a mark of the times in the course of reform and opening up. Over the past 16 years UFH has been working with high-level medical staff and man­agement teams from all over the world striving for excellence for the cause of China’s health.

In 2004, the first UFH hospital in Shanghai, on Xianxia Road, became one of only a few Sino-foreign joint venture hospitals in the city. After 16 years of development, it has become well-known for delivering a brand of high-end medical services in the ever-expanding metropolis. Its advanced multidisciplinary development has been based on the continuous expansion of the hospital business. The management team spent more than three years on site selection, renovation and relocation and finally moved the hospital to its new location, 699 Pingtang Road, at the end of 2019.

The new Shanghai UFH location has a spacious obstetrics room and ward with living facilities. The building area is about 20,000 square meters, whereas the advanced medical equipment keeps pace with the times. As an international com­prehensive medical institution radiating from Hongqiao Business District, UFH benefits the high-end medical needs of people from surrounding communities at home and abroad and minimizes the inconvenience brought by the location change to new and old patients.

On the other side of the Huangpu River, Shanghai UFH Pudong opened in Jinqiao in June 2018. With a floor area of nearly 30,000 square meters, the hospital, on the basis of obtaining an American JCI international certified medical service standard, provides patients with sub-specialty medical services under the international medical system.

UFH has developed two comprehensive hospitals and three community clinics, striving to build from prevention health care, disease diagnosis and treatment to recover the continuity of the health service chain.

Build international standards

“United Family Healthcare is the only medical service institution in Shanghai that has received JCI certification for 12 consecutive years. The United Fam­ily Healthcare team consists of more than 200 experienced full-time doctors and more than 300 nurses from over 20 countries and regions, and 15 percent of the medical staff are expats,” said Zhang Chengyu, general director of UFH in Shanghai.

In each department, nurses are avail­able to speak in both Chinese and English and provide care to each pa­tient. Medical technology and advanced breakthroughs have been made in spine correction surgery, single-cavity implant­ed cardioverter defibrillator surgery, hip replacement surgery and ovarian malig­nant tumor removal surgery.

UFH has made continuous progress in the development of specialized de­partments, such as pediatric medical resources from services in nursing, child care and neonatal care.

The obstetrics and gynecology depart­ments of UFH Pudong have experienced staff. In order to provide full cycle ser­vices before, during and after pregnancy, the hospital has set up a customized postpartum rehabilitation department which connects with obstetric services, so that postpartum women can enjoy professional, intimate and meticulous rehabilitation services.

Even under the COVID-19, the hospital continued to explore the establishment of a health management center — Zeiss visual expert shop. Adhering to the concept of continuous innovation, the company is committed to helping cus­tomers get efficient and professional personalized health prevention and screening, focusing on creating a con­tinuous medical service system.

Roberta Lipson, the founder and CEO of UFH, said that United Family Health will continue to be based in Shanghai and serve the city, in line with Shang­hai’s goal of becoming the “medical center of Asia.”

At the end of 2019, the listed invest­ment platform New Frontier, established by Xinfeng Tianwei Group, completed the acquisition of UFH. After changing its name to New Frontier Healthcare, it will become one of China’s largest comprehensive private medical service institutions listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Under the leadership of New Wind Healthcare Group, UFH will contin­ue to provide quality and comprehensive health care services in China, establish and develop an integrated health care platform to provide quality, reliable and life-cycle health care services to patients and families.

Spread love and help charity

Over the past 16 years, Shanghai UFH has been committed to providing social welfare and philanthropy.

Every year, UFH donates one percent of its annual income to medical services for low-income and needy groups that lack access to medical resources. Statistics reveal United Family Care Foundation has received more than 18,000 free outpatient visits, nearly 5,000 days of hospitalization, and more than 350 patients have received free surgical treatment at UFH.

Operation Smile is a non-profit pub­lic service organization with medical and non-medical volunteers, commit­ted to providing safe, high-quality, free surgery and related treatment for poor children with facial deformities in poor and remote areas of the world. Under the leadership of Wan Lijun, chief medical officer of Shanghai UFH, the United Fam­ily medical team was actively involved. UFH not only performed surgery for patients in poor mountainous areas, such as Xingren City in Guizhou, Wen­shan City Yunnan and Meigu County in Sichuan, but also provided first-aid training for local medical teams to im­prove the capability of medical skills in poor areas.

In October, Qin Yan, a pediatrician from Shanghai UFH, traveled to Meigu County in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province, together with other volunteers from Operation Smile to provide safe, high-quality, free surgery for poor children with cleft lip, and palate and other facial deformity. This is the seventh time in two years she’s gone into poor mountainous areas to deliver a “smile.” In two days, she per­formed 20 surgeries.

Moreover, Hong Xi, the chair of An­esthesiology Department, participates in “Operation Smile” 2-3 times a year — performing surgery in Morocco, the Philippines and remote areas of China such as Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces.

“Volunteer work was very hard, requir­ing at least 10 hours of high-intensity work every day. But people felt that this is a self-improvement experience, be­cause the short operation time could change a child’s fate instantly, improve their quality of life, which was of great significance,” Hong said.

“As a medical institution, when an epi­demic hits, our top priority is to fight it and provide high-quality and safe medi­cal services to patients,” Hong added.

Help fight the COVID-19

In 2020, COVID-19 swept the world. In the face of the epidemic, the UFH medi­cal staff, while sticking to the frontline of fighting the epidemic in Shanghai, wanted to help Wuhan.

Medical supplies, such as respirators and protective clothing, were in short supply after the outbreak. Lipson and Yue-Hong Lu, vice president of Supply Chain, sought supplies from multiple channels in domestic and international markets. New Frontier with UFH and other shareholders and partners worked hand-in-hand to send 29 sets of ICU equipment to Wuhan, with a gen/non­invasive ventilator, a 500 pipe breathing machine, 21 respirator masks, 155,000 medical latex gloves, 50,000 N95 surgical masks, 3,960 goggles and 185 reusable protective face screens. On February 8, UFH’s first medical supplies arrived at Leishenshan Hospital before a sec­ond batch of medical supplies arrived ten days later at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University.

Blood donations in Shanghai were reduced because of the COVID-19. But Shanghai UFH medical staff took the lead to donate blood. Shanghai UFH’s for­eign orthopedic surgeon Ashish Maskay created a Shanghai blood volunteer cen­ter. In September, he received the 2020 Shanghai “Magnolia Silver Award” for his outstanding contribution to the city’s fight against the novel coronavirus.

UFH’s multi-disciplinary consulta­tion team provide a strong professional force for screening suspected cases of fever in the Fever Clinic. During the COVID-19 outbreak, UFH continued to provide 24-hour fever screening every day and emergency services, as well as comprehensive outpatient and intensive care services. The international medical team has accumulated valuable experi­ence in prevention and control and made use of the big data system to achieve the three-level prevention and triage.

In addition, it has launched online diagnosis and treatment services, pro­viding public welfare online consultation services through the Internet, directly serving more than 5,000 people. Over 300 public lectures about health were held through the Internet, with a total of more than 14 million views.