The city's major hospitals are being asked by the Shanghai Sanitary Bureau to clearly inform patients that staff members cannot accept "red envelopes", as well as explain how they can file complaints, Shanghai Youth Daily reports.

Any staff that do accept "red envelopes" - filled with money from patients seeking preferential treatment - will be severely punished, and hospitals where a certain number of doctors have been found to pocket the envelopes will be presented with a yellow warning card.

Sanitary bureaux at the municipal and district levels will interview patients as they leave hospital to check on doctors' and other staff members' behaviour.

More than 38,000 questionnaires were issued in the first three quarters of this year.

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