HCM CITY — Patients sent complaints about waiting for tests, motorbike parking and toilets to leaders of HCM City Paediatrics Hospital 1 via a new system installed there by the city’s Department of Health.

Via the new computer-based system, patients access an e-survey with questions on 15 kinds of services which the hospital provides, including registration for health checks, payment of hospital fees, attitude and communication of hospital staff, quality of toilets and vehicle parking service.

The online system is accessible by hospital management as well as the city’s Department of Health to view the answers submitted.

The department every week sends a report including complaints via the online system and its hot line to the hospital and requires the hospital’s leaders to serve patients better.

Dr Nguyễn Thanh Hùng, head of the Paediatrics Hospital 1, said that since the installation of the system at the end of last month, the hospital has received the highest dissatisfaction about the long waits for tests, not enough spaces for motorbike parking and dirty toilets in the hospital.

After receiving the complaints, the hospital’s quality management division and other relevant agencies analysed the causes, Hùng said.

Parents, who brought their children to the hospital for health examination and treatment, did not park motorbikes at the hospital because people, who do not come to the hospital for treatment, parked their motorbikes there to walk to their company, he added.

The hospital stopped working with the provider of the toilet cleaning service and is co-operating with another one.

It installed two testing systems at its health examination department.

As a result, there had been no complaints about these things, Hùng said.

Tăng Chí Thượng, deputy head of the city’s Department of Health, said that the management of hospital quality should “start from patients’ dissatisfaction with hospitals”.

Lê Thị Hương Vân from Đồng Tháp Province in the Mekong Delta region, who brought her child to the Paediatrics Hospital 1, said that she complained about the long time she waited for an examination for her child because of overcrowding.

She felt satisfactory with the feedback system because it helped send her dissatisfaction with the hospital to the hospital’s leaders rapidly, Vân said.

The Paediatrics Hospital 1 is the first public hospital in the city with the installation of the system. The department plans to install it at all public hospitals in the city by May 10.

It aims to encourage patients to voice their dissatisfaction with hospitals to improve the quality of the healthcare service. — VNS