Paperwork piles up at Ho Chi Minh City’s Tu Du Hosptial.

Hospitals in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are crowded and service is slow after a Health Ministry program to improve patient care began last week.

“We’re trying to fix the problem but haven’t managed to do much,” Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted Hanh as saying.

Bach Mai Hospital began implementing a Health Ministry program to limit the number of patients sharing beds on Tuesday. The nationwide project, currently in its pilot stages in the capital, Ho Chi Minh City and the central city of Hue city, has yet to gain momentum after being launched at several hospitals late last week and early this week.

Under the program, the hospitals will allow book check-up appointments via phone, return test results throughout the day or via post, and add more sickbeds for patients and chairs for their relatives who care for them during their stay.

But the program has yet to make a dent in the overcrowding at Bach Mai, which received more than 6,900 checkup patients last week, meaning each doctor had to examine an average of 50 patients a day, sometimes 100.

“To raise the quality of check-ups and limit errors, each doctor should only examine 25 patients a day,” said Vu Thi Ngoc Lien, deputy head of the examination section at the hospital.

The Health Ministry requires each check-up to last at least 10 minutes, which Lien said meant that the hospital could not fit all patients in an eight-hour working day. Employees on the late shift often have to do tense overtime hours at night, she said.

Crowded corridors

On Tuesday, when the hospital opened the program, many patients and their relatives were still sitting on the ground, some in the sun, waiting for check-ups or to pay fees.

Bach Mai intends to add 45 more examination tables to its current 35, but the new check-up area is still under construction.

In response to the program, Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City plans to examine patients from six in the morning until each patient has been attended to.

Director Nguyen Truong Son said his staff would work through Vietnam’s traditional lunch break in order to meet the demands of the program.

Son said the hospital would set aside examination tables exclusively for patients above 70 years old, pregnant women, children and the disabled. He said a brand new check-up section would be opened later this month.

Lien from Bach Mai said that people did not seem keen on booking checkups via phone. “They’re not familiar with the system and don’t come on time. They would rather come when it’s convenient for them.”

The Friendship Hospital in Hanoi has also made several phone appointments, but one of its senior officers, speaking under the condition of anonymity, said he was worried that patients would not show up on time.

The hospital receives 600-800 checkup patients every day and most of them prefer to come in the morning, said the officer, noting that this meant mornings were particularly crowded.

Awaiting results

Ly Ngoc Kinh, head of the Examination and Treatment Management Bureau under the Health Ministry, said the ministry’s effort to improve hospital services “deserves recognition” but that patients still have yet to see real benefits.

Kinh said parts of the program were not new adjustments. Ho Chi Minh City University Medical Center already books appointments via phone and the National Hospital of Endocrinology returns test results via post.

Director Nguyen Duc Cong of Thong Nhat Hospital said patients there do not have to share beds, though the facility would still be making improvements as part of the program.

Vietnam-Germany Hospital in Hanoi became the first hospital to open the project on Saturday.

Eight hospitals began the program Wednesday: Cho Ray and Thong Nhat in Ho Chi Minh City, the National Children’s Hospital, K, National Ophthalmology Hospital, National Obstetrics Hospital, and the Friendship Hospital in Hanoi, and Hue National Hospital in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue.

Some other 1,000 hospitals nationwide are expected to carry out the program after the six-month trial, according to the health deputy minister Nguyen Thi Xuyen.

Source: TN, TT