Nguyễn Thị Kim Tiến, Minister of Health, speaks to Lao động Cuối tuần (Labour Weekend) about measures to improve health examination and treatment quality at hospitals in 2019.

Hospitals in Đà Nẵng have been overloaded because patients from neighbouring provinces have flocked into the city for medical examinations and treatment, reported online newspaper vov.vn.

The HCM City Department of Health has asked the city People’s Council to order Binh Chanh District to speed up compensation and site clearance procedures so that new medical facilities can be built in the area.

In 2013, a project to address understaffing and overcrowding at central hospitals in Việt Nam was approved, highlighting ‘telemedicine’ as a key measure to solve the problems.

A satellite hospital project has helped reduce patient overloads at hospitals, especially at central facilities in Hà Nội and HCM City, in its five years of implementation, conference-goers were told today in Hà Nội.

Many hospitals in HCM City face chronic overcrowding as they provide service for local patients as well as those from other provinces. Patients from outside the city now account for some 60 per cent, according to HCM City’s Health Department.

Historically, the mostly publicly financed health care system in Việt Nam has only been able to afford to pour resources into a handful of central level hospitals in big cities, forcing patients living in remote areas with serious diseases to go to Hà Nội or HCM City for treatment.

Some 6.6 million people have received better medical treatment as a result of a project which rotates doctors from high-level hospitals to lower-level hospitals, implemented in Việt Nam since 2008.

Ten years ago this month, the Bạch Mai Hospital (under the Ministry of Health) in Hà Nội  began transferring technology and providing technical assistance to the remote province Yên Bái under a programme aimed at reducing people having to go to major hospitals in large cities to receive modern treatment. Hospital director Dr Nguyễn Quốc Anh reviews the programme in a talk with the Sức Khoẻ & Đời Sống (Health & Life) newspaper.

In order to reduce pressure placed on central hospitals, the basic medical services package at commune-level medical facilities will be implemented from December, 2017.