I recently recalled one of my articles entitled "Thoughts from Street Cleaning", in which I talked about the undesirable working time schedule of the city's street cleaners, which overlaps that of ordinary people's working schedule. Today I am still caught in layers of dust on my way to school. Various experiences have made me fully aware of the fact that change needs time and courage.

But I do not have to be cynical this time. The good news has just come: most public hospitals in Shanghai have adjusted their non-emergency treatment hospital hours recently. People are now able to register for the non-emergency treatment both at noon and in the evening in addition to regular daytime hours.

In the past, hospitals only had non-emergency treatment hours, that is, regular hours, from 8:00am to 11:30am, 1:30pm to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday, exactly the same schedule as almost every business entity and every government agency has. On weekends there is usually only half a day available for non-emergency treatment (but my tip is: never go there at the weekend, when you will probably meet a trainee doctor or an experienced doctor upset about working on weekends). In a word, it was just the style of "when you work, I work, when you come off work it's also my turn to go home", typical of most public agencies in the planned economy era.

If one wishes to see the doctor, he or she should be prepared for the huge trouble he or she is going to run into. Typically, he or she first asks for leave, and then begs for leave and then just leaves without any notice.

Going to hospital is always a rush. I remember when I once went to hospital, I had to slip part of my class and accelerated my bicycle to rush there before 4:30pm, after which time no patient could be registered. The doctor I went to see happened to specialize in traditional Chinese medicine. When she felt my pulse, she asked me: "How is it that your pulse beats so fast? Are you having some negative effects from the herbs I gave you last time?"

It is normal for people to be rushed to hospital, but not for people to rush to hospital.

Fortunately all of this can now come to a stop, or at least, a rest.

For this we should be grateful to our Municipal Government, who played a substantial role in urging the hospital hour adjustment. This time we have to admit that sometimes we enjoy benefits from "government intervention". Immune to the pressure of market competition (if any), public hospitals will never make changes themselves.

They are entities of unmatched self-pride. Their mere existence ensures them plenty of patients and profits (because there is a monopoly and there is state funding). And since it is not a profession keen on making profits, its system is fine as long as those who are working in it are satisfied; there is no need to care about its clients - the patients. We can choose between shampoos, biscuits and DVDs, but few of us really have a good choice of hospitals, universities or political leaders. And even fewer of us have the choice of getting or not getting diseases or injuries. If I am not satisfied with the supermarket, I just go to another one. But public hospitals are all the same. The doctors and nurses there have the same face.

It is not the extension of hospital hours alone that is worth celebrating, what signified progress is the change in people's conception, as well as that of the government, that all public entities providing basic and necessary service to the people are more than a profession and their system should be designed more for the needs of the "guest" than for the convenience of the "host".

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