BEIJING -- The Chinese health authority on Monday called for closer ties between top level urban hospitals and county facilities to improve the latter's service capacity.

By 2011, China had 10,337 county hospitals, which directly served more than 900 million rural people. However, many rural patients tend to go to major urban hospitals to pursue better quality services.

However, there were only about 1,400 level III hospitals, which are of the highest standard in China, as of last year.

Level III hospitals should work with their rural partners in making development plans, personnel training and two-way patient transfer, according to a guideline published Monday by the Ministry of Health.

Dispatched personnel at the county hospitals should participate in routine work, actively promote applicable medical technologies, give model lessons in operations and provide standard training to local doctors, said the document.

It also required the building of Internet-based training and consulting systems between the partners, in addition to full utilization of local resources in traditional Chinese medicine.

The ministry has set a goal of restoring people's trust in county-level medical institutions and serving 90 percent of all the patients within each county.