Medical staff treat a patient in Nguyen Trai Hospital in District 5, Ho Chi Minh City.

Doctors at a Ho Chi Minh City conference Tuesday were divided over a draft law requiring practitioners to have medical licenses and obliging hospitals to allow patients to access to their clinical records.

Vietnam requires no license for individuals to practice medicine at health facilities and state hospitals are not bound to show patients their records.

State vs. private

The draft, expected to become law next July, compels all doctors and nurses to obtain licenses from the National Medical Council.

Nguyen Van Chau, director of the HCMC Health Department, said requiring doctors at state-owned medical centers to have licenses would be impractical.

He said the council would be unable to grant licenses to the hundreds of thousands of state doctors.

“However, making licenses mandatory for private doctors is more necessary and more practical,” he said, arguing that doctors at private facilities were less numerous and also not directly monitored by the government.

But Chau’s deputy Phan Van Bau said the license regulation should be applied to both state and private doctors “to prove the doctors’ expertise.” He said such documents were standard in countries outside Vietnam.

Without mentioning names, Bau told a cautionary tale of a surgeon accused of malpractice at a state hospital who then went to work at a private medical center and has escaped scrutiny ever since.

Nguyen Huu Tung, general director of the private Hoan My Hospital, said the law was a good idea. “Anyone who wants to treat and examine patients should be licensed; we’ve got no separate laws for state and private medical centers.”

Secret records

According to the draft law, patients would be able to view and copy their records on request.

But nearly all doctors from state hospitals at the conference disagreed with the idea.

Do Hoang Quan, director of the state-run Gia Dinh People’s Hospital, said, “letting patients approach the records may cause various complications.”

His counterpart Tran Son Thach from Hung Vuong Hospital told Sai Gon Tiep Thi magazine that a state hospital houses an average of 500 patients and that getting records to each patient would be too big a hassle.

He said the problem would persist even if hospitals charged a fee for the service. “The records can only be presented when needed by the police or court officials.”

But officials from the HCMC Justice Department said the information should not be confidential. Only information in the medical records not related to treatment should be kept classified, they said.

Trieu An General Hospital, a private institution in Ho Chi Minh City, has let its patients access their medical records for some time.

An official from the hospital said a small fee was charged but gave no indication of problems with the process.

Tung from Hoan My Hospital said private hospitals had to be careful.

“Whenever problems hit the media, the public always sides with the patients over the hospital,” he said.

“So, private hospitals are somewhat afraid of their clients and often do whatever they ask.”

The law would also make the disclosure of doctor histories mandatory upon patient request, said Sai Gon Tiep Thi magazine.

Doctors are currently not compelled to show their own records to patients.

Source: Tuoi Tre