Minister of Health Nguyễn Thị Kim Tiến has invited local and overseas investors to invest into the healthcare sector in Việt Nam, saying that one of the foundations of her ministry’s policy is to encourage private enterprises to invest in the sector. — Photo giadinh.net.vn

HCM CITY — Minister of Health Nguyễn Thị Kim Tiến has invited local and overseas investors to invest into the healthcare sector in Việt Nam, saying that one of the foundations of her ministry’s policy is to encourage private enterprises to invest in the sector.

Speaking to about 1,000 delegates from 400 hospitals and organisations in 35 countries at the 15th Hospital Management Asia (HMA) conference, which began in HCM City yesterday, Tiến stressed that the Vietnamese Government had set a high priority on promoting social welfare programmes and prioritising healthcare.

“The Ministry of Health has strived to ensure fair, effective and quality health care over past years. There are 1,300 hospitals with 250,000 patient beds in Việt Nam at present. They serve more than 150 million outpatients and 15 million inpatients while conducting 3 million surgeries every year,” she said.

However, Tiến admitted there were challenges facing the health care sector and expressed willingness to learn from other countries’ experience. 

“We still face many difficulties and challenges in expanding universal health insurance coverage coupled with improving quality of service, extending benefits for health insurance card holders together with innovating appropriate payment mechanisms, identifying basic health benefits packages to meet the needs of healthcare for most people,” she said.

“The challenges also include deploying the family doctor system, improving primary healthcare capacity and managing the quality of service and strengthening quality management of hospitals and establishing an independant evaluation unit,” she added.

During the two-day event, 104 speakers from 22 countries will share their experiences.

They focus on hospitals’ social responsibility, human resources development, improving service quality, marketing and public relations, patient safety, improving service quality, customer services, technical infrastructure and medical equipment improvement, hospital governance reforms, and IT application. 

Fifty-three awards will be presented to the best among 322 quality improvement initiatives. Meanwhile, Vi Nguyệt Hồ, who founded the Việt Nam Nurses Association, will be honoured with the devotion award for her life-long contributions to nursing. 

The HMA conference is held by the Asian Hospital Federation with a view to sharing experience in hospital management and service improvement. 

Việt Nam hosted the HMA conference in HCM City in 2009 and Hà Nội in 2012. — VNS