'Hospital director in Ho Chi Minh City has a headache because patients from the province are pushing up'

On the afternoon of October 13, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health held an online meeting to review medical examination and treatment work in the first 9 months of 2023 and deploy tasks for the last months of the year. At this meeting, the Department of Health named hospital directors at the bridgehead.

At the meeting, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Hang, Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Social Insurance (SSI), said that in the first 9 months of 2023, the SSI signed health insurance medical examination and treatment contracts with 188 medical examination and treatment facilities, including 91 public facilities. In addition, there are 162 health insurance medical examination and treatment stations.

In 2023, the Prime Minister assigned Ho Chi Minh City a budget of VND 21,097 billion for health insurance examination and treatment (an increase of VND 1 billion compared to 2022). In the first 9 months of this year, there were nearly 15 million health insurance examination and treatment visits (an increase of more than 22% compared to the same period in 2022), of which 13.7 million were outpatients and 1.3 million were inpatients.

And Ho Chi Minh City also spent 16,429 billion VND, an increase of 15% over the same period in 2022 (an increase of 2,200 billion VND). The estimated expenditure for the whole year of 2023 in Ho Chi Minh City is 22,579 billion VND, compared to the estimate, the imbalance is estimated at about 1,400 billion VND.

Many patients from the provinces come to Ho Chi Minh City for medical examination and treatment.

"HCMC Social Insurance has worked with Vietnam Social Insurance to ask the Government to supplement funding for HCMC, possibly asking for a maximum of VND800 billion, which would cause an imbalance of VND600-700 billion," said Ms. Thu Hang.

The reason for the increase in costs was explained by the leader of the Ho Chi Minh City Social Insurance as after the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of serious cases increased, the number of out-of-province medical examinations and treatments increased due to the connection to the district. The reality is that every morning, there are passenger vans carrying patients from other provinces to hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City for day-time medical examinations and returns. Some provinces are slow in bidding for drugs and medical supplies, so patients are pushed to Ho Chi Minh City.

Every day, many buses take patients from the provinces to Ho Chi Minh City for medical examination and treatment.

In addition, the subjective cause is that some hospitals prescribe extensive services such as medicine, medical supplies, hospitalization, etc. The leaders of the Ho Chi Minh City Social Insurance Agency requested that hospitals control services and reasonable costs in the coming time.

Faced with the above situation, Associate Professor, Dr. Tang Chi Thuong, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health, said that after 2 years of the epidemic, the number of medical examinations and treatments is expected to increase in 2023. However, because the expected costs will exceed the budget, hospital directors must review carefully.

According to Associate Professor, Dr. Tang Chi Thuong, in the last 3 months of the year, hospital directors in Ho Chi Minh City will have a headache because patients from the provinces will come up, as happens every year. However, currently, people who are sick will go to Ho Chi Minh City for medical examination and treatment, they cannot refuse, and when the disease is diagnosed and the treatment is stable, the patient will be transferred to the province for treatment. The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health will send a document to the provincial health departments about this issue to coordinate and share with the Ho Chi Minh City health sector, because the end of the year is very difficult.

"I am very worried that some hospitals will only realize at the end of the year that they have used too much health insurance and have no money to pay back. The Department of Health assigned Children's Hospital 1 to pilot the financial warning software to replicate it in other hospitals," said the Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health.

In September 2023, Ho Chi Minh City "faced" dengue fever, hand, foot and mouth disease, pink eye, monkeypox... However, Ho Chi Minh City has proactively prevented and decoded the genes of the virus that causes monkeypox and pink eye.

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