China plans to ramp up its crackdown on heathcare scams as fraudulent practices are still severe and prevalent in the country's medical insurance sector, Hu Jinglin, head of the National Healthcare Security Administration, said on Sunday afternoon on the sidelines of the second session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

The country's top medical security authority launched a nationwide campaign in September to discover issues and combat violations associated with healthcare insurance funds.

"The campaign has recovered a great deal of medical insurance money," he told reporters at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. "About 66,000 medical institutions in breach of regulations have been identified, and 24,000 individuals were found to have committed frauds."

However, Hu said the overall supervision and management of China's healthcare fund is still lax and loose.

"There is still an arduous task ahead in order to root out healthcare scams, and this task will be a top priority for us," he said.

A host of measures will be rolled out, according to Hu, including increasing the number of random examinations and sample collections to make full use of the reward system for whistleblowers, and deploying information technologies, especially big data to help identify violators.