Minister of Health: Headaches also go beyond the line, overload is right!

After talking to patients waiting to be examined at Cho Ray Hospital, the Minister of Health shook his head because nearly half of the patients went to the hospital just to get checked for headaches, flu, etc.

Nearly half are patients who go beyond the prescribed level.

On the morning of July 7, Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien and health sector leaders inspected the overload situation in medical examination and treatment in Ho Chi Minh City.

A patient complained to the Minister of Health about the cumbersome administrative mechanism - Photo: Thanh Huyen

The hot spot of the overload problem that Minister Tien is particularly concerned about is Cho Ray Hospital.

Although he has witnessed the overload many times, the Minister of Health still had to shake his head when he saw too many patients waiting to be examined, so many that the hospital had to arrange plastic chairs but there were still many cases of people sitting on the floor, spilling out into the walkways.

To get from the waiting area to the medical examination area on the first floor, the Minister of Health, like everyone else, jostled and sweated.

After asking some patients, Minister Tien learned that most of them had gone to the wrong hospital. And it was the situation of going to the wrong hospital that caused the overload, which could not be resolved.

“I asked a patient, this patient said that he took a bus from Tay Ninh early in the morning to come here for a medical examination. What kind of illness, a headache? The patient said that he had never been examined locally, but went straight to Cho Ray because he trusted him more. In reality, there are not that many patients coming to see a doctor, because for every patient who goes beyond the line, there is a relative. This is where the overload comes from!” - the Minister of Health discussed with the Board of Directors of Cho Ray Hospital.

According to Minister Tien, reducing the overload at Cho Ray Hospital is currently the most difficult problem, more difficult than at hospitals in the North.

For example, in Hanoi, the Oncology Hospital has solved the problem of reducing the load, building and upgrading 1,000 more beds, or the Endocrinology Hospital 2 and some other hospitals have done a very good job of reducing the load.

However, Cho Ray Hospital alone, built before 1975, has only 700 beds.

Later, Cho Ray Hospital also tried to upgrade to 2000 beds, but the conditions were extremely difficult because the land fund was limited, there was no more room to expand, while the people's need for medical examination and treatment was increasing day by day.

Fixed, but not fundamental

To reduce the overload at Cho Ray Hospital, Minister Tien said that in the immediate future, cases of medical examinations beyond the hospital's line can be rescheduled to avoid overloading in the morning.

Patients lie in the hallway due to overcrowding. Photo taken at Cho Ray Hospital. Photo: Louis Papa

At the same time, there needs to be a way to treat the root cause. That is, the medicine given to health insurance patients to treat internal diseases must be the same at all levels, and the treatment regimen must also be the same, only different in technique.

“Patients complained that the medicine for stomach pain at lower-level hospitals is different from that at higher-level hospitals. When we go to higher-level hospitals for examination, we get better medicine, so why go to local hospitals? If the medicine is the same everywhere, patients will not go to higher-level hospitals anymore,” said Minister Tien.

According to Dr. Nguyen Truong Son, Director of Cho Ray Hospital, on the morning of July 7 alone, Cho Ray Hospital had up to 3,000 patients registered for medical examination.

Currently, Cho Ray Hospital has 55 examination rooms, with 93 examination tables, an increase of 15 tables compared to 2013.

Thanks to that, patient waiting time has also been reduced by 1/3 compared to before.

However, Dr. Nguyen Truong Son also had to admit that there was an extremely complicated procedure, which was the regulation that patients transferred to another hospital under health insurance had to photocopy dozens of transfer papers.

Patients often forget to photocopy when transferred to Cho Ray Hospital, and only photocopy when they get to the hospital, so they have to queue again.

Mr. Nguyen Van Kham, Deputy Director of the Department of Health Insurance, Ministry of Health, said that the reason for this situation is because the hospital trusts the patient but the insurance does not trust the hospital!

In the end, the patient suffers the most. Therefore, only one person needs to be in charge of the transfer form at the hospital, no need to photocopy many copies, go to each department and submit one copy like before.

According to statistics from Cho Ray Hospital, since the beginning of the year, the number of patients coming for treatment here has not decreased but has increased slightly. The hospital has had to arrange 600 more stretchers in the hallway to avoid sharing beds. However, 15.8% of patients still have to share beds.

Hospital equipment and operating rooms are also overloaded. Therefore, doctors have to perform scheduled surgeries after 4 p.m.

According to Viet nam net