Experience sharing on enhancing surgical treatment capabilities of community hospitals at the grassroots level in Shanghai

As a mega-city, Shanghai is home to over 24 million permanent residents, for whom community hospitals serve as the frontline provider of healthcare. As a critical public health interface for the general population, the surgical competence of community hospitals directly impacts patients' health and safety. Current challenges in community hospitals include outdated and inadequate surgical hardware, a shortage of specialized surgical staff, insufficient continuing medical education, limited overall surgical capacity, and inadequate standardization of clinical procedures. Addressing these issues is therefore essential to improving patients' care experience and public health outcomes. This paper focuses on core strategies to enhance the surgical capacity of community hospitals, including upgrading hardware facilities to strengthen diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities, improving the systematic training of healthcare professionals, and standardizing diagnosis, treatment, and preventive care. It further shares exemplary practices from two community hospitals supported by Shanghai General Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. Key initiatives highlighted include the development of standardized outpatient operating rooms at the community level, as well as two-way collaborative efforts: advancing further training for community physicians at higher-level institutions and deploying senior specialists from tertiary hospitals to community settings. These practices provide valuable experience for the future development of surgical services in primary community hospitals. Looking ahead, the urgent need to upgrade primary surgical capacity requires continued support from tertiary hospitals to advance both hardware and software development in primary care settings. Furthermore, improving the surgical skills of primary community hospitals will optimize the allocation of medical resources, enhance public satisfaction with healthcare services, and enable residents to access standardized, convenient, and high-quality surgical care.