Ha Nam health sector promotes digital transformation

Every day, the Traditional Medicine Hospital of Ha Nam province receives over 200 people coming for medical examination and treatment, with peak times reaching over 300 people per day. To make it as convenient as possible for people to come for medical examination and treatment, the hospital has implemented many suitable registration methods such as: using chip-embedded citizen identification cards (CCCD); using the VNeID application, helping patients to complete medical examination and treatment procedures in just 30 seconds. Along with that, the dynamic QR cashless online payment solution being deployed at the hospital also helps people pay for medical services and hospital fees quickly and accurately. The hospital has also put into use an automatic registration machine and an electronic board showing the order number to help patients avoid queuing, jostling and ensuring fairness. Instead of having to come early and get an automatic number, patients can register for health insurance through the self-service kiosk system and go directly to the clinic as requested with just a CCCD card or VNeID identification account.

However, this is a new solution and it takes time for patients to access it because most of the patients at the hospital are elderly. To prepare for the implementation of electronic medical records in 2025, the unit has been actively coordinating with VNPT Ha Nam to assess the current status of hospital infrastructure, equipment, software systems and implementation estimates. Mr. Ha Van Dien, Director of the Provincial Traditional Medicine Hospital, said: Deploying electronic medical records is not easy but requires careful preparation and ensuring adequate financial resources from investing in IT infrastructure, purchasing software and equipment to training staff. We have reviewed existing facilities, made a list of equipment that needs to be supplemented and upgraded to build a specific roadmap and be ready to implement. To ensure the best conditions for the implementation of electronic medical records at the hospital, helping to optimize the medical examination and treatment process, the unit needs 1-2 servers and 50 new computers to meet the equipment requirements, so we hope that the province will soon have instructions on assigning a centralized purchasing unit in 2025 for the unit to register.

Patients perform the operation of getting an automatic medical examination and treatment queue number at the Provincial Hospital of Traditional Medicine.

In line with the guidelines and policies of the Party, the State, the direction of the Ministry of Health , and the province on digital transformation, the Ha Nam Department of Health has issued documents directing, urging, and guiding units in the sector to carry out digital transformation tasks and Project 06 in accordance with the actual situation. Currently, 100% of medical examination and treatment facilities in the province perform medical examination and treatment using chip-embedded ID cards. Since the beginning of the year, more than 1 million people have used chip-embedded ID cards for health insurance medical examination and treatment, of which the number of successful searches has reached 93%. 100% of medical examination and treatment facilities registering for health insurance medical examination and treatment automatically push data to the Ministry of Health's Data Portal and the Vietnam Social Security's Health Insurance Appraisal Portal in accordance with regulations, the average number of online file appraisal results sent on time is over 95%. Provincial and district general and specialized hospitals coordinate with units providing medical examination and treatment management software; Connect with banks or intermediaries to make cashless hospital payments. The pilot implementation of the biometric health care model and self-service kiosks at some provincial and district health facilities has initially brought certain results.

In addition, the Department of Health also directs and manages drug businesses to connect pharmacies to control the origin and source of drugs. Currently, 165 pharmacies, 360 drug stores and 20 drug wholesalers in the province have been granted accounts to connect drug suppliers, reaching a rate of 100%. The Department has granted connection codes to 136 medical facilities, of which 70 facilities have connected prescriptions to the national prescription system with a total of more than 1.1 million prescriptions since the beginning of 2024. Medical facilities have also actively registered accounts to connect driver health examination data, birth certificates and death certificates to the Health Insurance Assessment Information System Data Reception Portal.

Recently, the Department of Health has advised the Provincial People's Committee to issue a Plan to pilot the implementation of the Electronic Health Book for integration on the VNeID application at all health insurance facilities in the province. At the same time, it has issued documents directing and urging health insurance facilities to connect health insurance data to the Health Insurance Assessment Portal according to Decision 130/QD-BYT and Decision No. 4750/QD-BYT of the Ministry of Health. These are data tables serving health insurance payment, and are also data for the Social Insurance to push data into the electronic health book.

In addition to the achieved results, in the process of digital transformation and Project 06, the Ha Nam health sector still faces some difficulties and obstacles. Human resources for digital transformation tasks are still limited; infrastructure and IT equipment at units are not yet synchronized; the financial mechanism for the application of medical IT in general and the implementation of specific platforms in particular (electronic medical records, electronic health books, remote medical examination and treatment...) is not clear, so units mainly use the unit's development investment fund to apply IT, affecting other activities of the unit. In addition, the payment connection between banks and the HIS hospital management software system is still difficult due to the high security features of the bank, so the rate of non-cash payments at medical examination and treatment facilities is still low...

Mr. Phan Anh Phong, Deputy Director of the Department of Health, said: In the coming time, the Department of Health will continue to direct hospitals and units in the industry to make efforts to implement digital transformation, apply IT in management and operation, contributing to reforming administrative procedures, improving the quality of medical services to better serve the people. Along with that, strengthen coordination to pilot the implementation of the Electronic Health Book to integrate the VNeID application to serve the management, protection and health care of the entire population in the province. By 2025, strive to have at least one hospital deploying electronic medical records.

Source: https://mic.gov.vn/nganh-y-te-ha-nam-day-manh-chuyen-doi-so-197241112143559199.htm