Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital details pre-admission and regional referral services

Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital has described how its patient service centre coordinates the steps between a doctor's admission certificate and a patient's arrival on a ward. The October 26, 2026 report describes services already operating. The centre developed from an admission office renamed a pre-admission preparation centre in 2018.

Guidance before a bed is ready

The centre's “3+N+AI” approach combines messages at three points—issue of an admission certificate, booking of hospitalisation and notification to come in—with tailored education and telephone follow-up by staff. AI handles standard, simple questions around the clock and gives guidance on online procedures. This is administrative guidance for hospitalisation procedures.

Family-linked accounts allow children to help older parents check their hospitalisation progress and complete some procedures. The centre brings 12 services, including pre-admission follow-up, assessment, hospitalisation booking and preoperative test appointments, to one window. A night window makes admission processing available 24 hours a day.

Beds and tests are coordinated together

The hospital describes a shared system for allocating beds across departments and campuses. It gives priority to critically ill patients, people with rare diseases and those undergoing grade-IV complex operations in China's surgical classification, rather than relying only on order of registration. The grade refers to surgical complexity, not stage-IV cancer.

When doctors issue an admission certificate, they can also order the necessary checks. Test appointments are coordinated with bed allocation, and patients can print their examination guide when completing admission. Concentrating the checks in one area is intended to reduce separate bookings and repeated journeys. The hospital says these coordinated preoperative checks are included in inpatient settlement; this billing arrangement does not itself establish an individual's insurance entitlement.

A regional route for continuing care

The report also follows a family arranging rehabilitation closer to home after the father's heart condition had stabilised. His daughter submitted the request on her mobile phone, the receiving hospital obtained the electronic records and test reports through the platform, and sent an ambulance to take him to the ward. The family described completing that transfer in a few hours. The timing comes from that family’s account of its transfer.

The hospital's two-way referral process links application, review, transfer and admission handling. Its connection to Chengdu's municipal platform dates to December 2025 and covers 384 medical institutions. The network coordinates care between hospitals in the region.

For someone preparing inpatient care in Chengdu, the report identifies which team can coordinate preparations, why a certificate does not itself determine when a bed is available, and how tests and later local rehabilitation can be linked. The practical discussion with the hospital remains the patient's required identity documents, current records and individual admission arrangements.