Benefits of cashless hospital payment

More and more areas and people are using cashless payment methods because of the benefits they bring. In the healthcare sector, digital payments are creating “double benefits” for both medical facilities and patients; helping to reduce administrative procedures, saving time and costs.

Implementing fee collection through banks at the Provincial General Hospital.

Cashless payment of medical examination and treatment costs brings benefits to people such as: no need to wait in line, easy and shortened payment time for medical examination and treatment costs, saving time, effort, cost and ensuring mental health; no need to carry a lot of cash, preventing the risk of losing money during hospitalization; patients can pay by themselves when they are well and discharged from the hospital without having to have family members accompany them to do the procedures. For the community and society, cashless payment of medical examination and treatment costs helps banks and payment intermediaries easily deploy cashless payment services for medical examination and treatment costs at hospitals. The payment connection is quick, does not take much effort, reduces social costs and does not depend on the payment service provider, the hospital information system software developer, contributing to creating an equal environment in providing cashless payment services for medical examination and treatment costs. For health facilities, paying for medical examination and treatment services in a cashless manner helps to make transactions transparent; easily control revenue and expenditure, check information when needed; save management, counting, and printing costs; at the same time, shorten the medical examination and treatment process, improve the quality of service for people, promote digital transformation, contributing to increasing people's satisfaction when examining and treating patients. In addition, electronic payment is also integrated with the information system and electronic medical records, contributing to accelerating the process of digital transformation of hospitals, towards the model of "Smart Hospital". With the above practical utilities, the Department of Health has currently deployed cashless payment of hospital fees throughout the sector. Medical examination and treatment facilities stick QR codes and place POS machines at all collection transaction counters; The team of cashiers are well-trained and professional, ready to advise and coordinate with patients during the transaction process, helping people grasp the benefits of electronic transactions, thereby promoting and widely disseminating the use of services, changing the habit of using cash when going to see a doctor or receiving medical treatment.

Pioneering modern solutions in non-cash payment, in recent times, Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade, Bac Nam Dinh Branch (Vietinbank Bac Nam Dinh) has upgraded its payment infrastructure, innovated, updated technology applications, and promoted electronic payments to improve service quality and meet customer needs. The unit has promoted the signing of cooperation agreements with hospitals, district medical centers, and non-public medical examination and treatment facilities to implement digital transformation in payments in the health sector. Currently, there are 10 units implementing fee collection via static QR codes, including: Provincial Obstetrics Hospital, Provincial Lung Hospital, Provincial Mental Hospital, Provincial Eye Hospital, Endocrinology Hospital, and District Medical Centers: Truc Ninh, My Loc, Nam Truc, Vu Ban, Giao Thuy, Nghia Hung. Four units have completed connecting to the system and officially deployed the solution to collect library fees via dynamic QR codes, namely the Provincial General Hospital, the Traditional Medicine Hospital, the Hai Hau District General Hospital, and the Xuan Truong District Medical Center; two units are deploying the connection to the system to collect library fees via dynamic QR codes.

As a leading provincial hospital, the Provincial General Hospital has 900 beds with an average of 262,000 outpatient visits per year and 40,000 inpatient visits per year. The number of patients coming to register for medical examination and treatment along with the daily cash payment transactions at the hospital is very large, leading to a situation where people have to wait in line to pay hospital fees, which puts great pressure on financial and accounting staff, along with the risk of errors in paperwork and money because patients have many hospital fees with documents, test results... and easily lose receipts, affecting the quality of service of the hospital. People also waste time when having to serve patients, and sometimes spend more time waiting to pay hospital fees when completing procedures for patients to be discharged from the hospital. Initial records after more than 1 year of implementing the dynamic QR code payment service of Vietinbank Bac Nam Dinh Branch show that the system operates smoothly, safely, quickly, conveniently, and without errors; helping the accounting and finance departments at the connected units to better account for hospital fee revenue sources, significantly reducing paperwork and cash counting procedures for large-value transactions, improving efficiency as well as service quality for people coming to the hospital for medical examination and treatment. The rate of non-cash payment of medical examination and treatment costs at the hospital increased by more than 20%. In addition, it helps the hospital shorten the waiting time for patients to be examined and treated by 15-20 minutes, reducing congestion in the hospital fee payment area. In the first 3 months of 2024, Vietinbank Bac Nam Dinh collected nearly 4,400 hospital fees with a total value of more than 19 billion VND.

After a period of implementing cashless payment, the reality shows that the majority of people using this form of payment are young people, with high education level, and proficient in using information technology and smartphones. However, the proportion of these people is not large in the total number of patients coming for medical examination and treatment. There are still many people who are still using cash to pay hospital fees due to factors such as cash usage habits; not familiar with paying via bank using SmartBanking cards, InternetBanking, e-wallets; the elderly do not use smartphones... That is the main reason why the rate of patients paying cashlessly is not high. In addition, cashless payment is also revealing some problems that need to be overcome such as: technical errors in the system during the transfer process that cause the patient's account to be deducted but the money has not been transferred to the hospital's account. This leads to difficulties in the process of guidance, explanation, troubleshooting... Cashless hospital payment can be interrupted or have errors due to banking system maintenance, upgrading or unstable wifi network quality.

To achieve the goal of having 60% of medical examination and treatment facilities in urban areas accepting non-cash payment for medical services by the end of 2025, commercial banks and organizations providing intermediary payment services will actively coordinate with hospitals and district medical centers to accelerate the implementation of various forms of non-cash payment, meeting the needs of people when participating in medical examination and treatment; have additional methods for accountants to control the money in hospital accounts as soon as customers successfully complete transactions. Hospitals need to invest in and upgrade infrastructure systems such as high-speed internet systems, wifi, etc.; develop plans to deploy non-cash payment solutions at the unit, with a specific implementation roadmap; train and improve the qualifications of staff to be able to support patients quickly, as well as have the knowledge to detect fraud in non-cash payment of hospital fees; Strengthen propaganda and consultation on the benefits of cashless hospital payment through social networking sites and the unit's website for people./.

Article and photos: Duc Toan

Source: https://baonamdinh.vn/kinh-te/202404/loi-ich-tu-thanh-toan-vien-phi-khong-dung-tien-mat-6f112cb/