China will expand medical insurance coverage and encourage reimbursement for assisted fertility services as part of the nation's efforts to increase birthrates, the National Healthcare Insurance Administration said on Tuesday.

Maternity insurance is now part of China's basic employee insurance program that covers the medical bills of female workers during pregnancy and their salaries during maternity leave.

The program is aimed at reducing their financial burdens, sharing the labor costs of employers and promoting gender equality at workplaces.

Zhang Ke, head of the administration, said that about 249 million women enrolled in maternity insurance programs last year, with nearly 118 billion yuan ($18.4 billion) spent in total. On average, each insured female worker received a maternity allowance of 26,000 yuan.

As China is accelerating efforts to lift birthrates, Zhang said that the administration will increase coverage of maternity insurance in the future.

One significant measure, he said, is to encourage some regions to allow flexible workers — whose employee insurance does not include maternity benefits — to enroll in maternity insurance plans.

"We have so far guided Tianjin and the provinces of Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Guizhou to explore the practice, and the outcomes have been positive," he said.

At present, maternity subsidies are either directly issued to pregnant employees or forwarded to them through their employers.

"We are also communicating with the All-China Women's Federation to research the possibility of expanding the practice of directly doling out subsidies," he said.

Amid a deepening trend of delays in marriage and childbirth and a growing number of families grappling with infertility, Zhang said that the administration has been advancing inclusion of assisted fertility technologies in basic medical insurance.

So far, 20 provincial-level regions, including Beijing, the Guangxi Zhuang and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions and Gansu province, have extended medical insurance coverage to a slew of assisted reproductive services, and more regions are expected to follow suit this year.

To further satisfy the needs of mothers-to-be and improve their childbirth experiences, Zhang said that the administration has clarified pricing mechanisms for relatively novel services during labor, including labor pain relief, music-assisted delivery and family companionship during childbirth, he added.

Yan Qinghui, deputy director of the administration, said that in the past, parents had to obtain the household registration certificates of newborns before enrolling their babies in basic medical insurance. The policy had created concerns for families whose newborns have to be transferred to an incubator or undergo operations immediately after delivery.

To streamline these procedures, Yan said newborns can now be enrolled online based on birth certificates provided by the hospitals alone.

Zhang, the administration head, said that all these efforts are aimed at creating a favorable environment to support births and providing more convenient services for the public.