Proposal to assign "autonomous hospital beds" to financially autonomous public health facilities

Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Council Hoang Viet Duong chaired the meeting. Photo: Thanh Duy

On the morning of May 7, the monitoring delegation of the People's Council of Nghe An province supervised the work of organizational structure, payroll, and labor contracts in state administrative agencies and public service units in the province for the Trauma - Orthopedic Hospital. Vice Chairman of the People's Council of Nghe An province Hoang Viet Duong chaired the meeting.

The Trauma and Orthopedics Hospital currently has 4 functional rooms, 10 clinical and paraclinical departments. Currently, this medical facility has 70 staff, including 20 doctors, 30 nurses, 6 technicians, 1 pharmacy specialist II, 3 pharmacy colleges and intermediate pharmacy and 12 other staff. This unit began to be self-sufficient in regular expenses from the beginning of 2018.

Making recommendations to the monitoring team, Director of the Trauma - Orthopedic Hospital, Master, Doctor Nguyen Hoai Nam, suggested that superiors consider assigning "autonomous hospital beds", not depending on planned hospital beds like non-autonomous public health units, so that the unit can be more proactive in human resources, ensuring that it meets the actual patient treatment capacity.

Director of the Trauma and Orthopedics Hospital, Master, Doctor Nguyen Hoai Nam spoke at the meeting. Photo: Thanh Duy

"The unit has autonomy in regular spending, so assigning autonomous hospital beds will not affect the State budget" - Doctor Nam clarified the proposal by saying that the actual number of patients being treated is about 220 people, double the total number of assigned hospital beds of 120.

At the meeting, the members of the monitoring delegation also learned more about issues related to job positions, financial autonomy, attracting experts, etc. of the Trauma - Orthopedics Hospital.

Concluding the meeting, Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Council Hoang Viet Duong acknowledged the results of the Trauma - Orthopedic Hospital; at the same time, requested the unit to develop and supplement the Project on quality job positions to consolidate and build the apparatus, and improve the quality of the medical staff.

The Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Council also requested the hospital to both perform well its professional tasks and better implement the autonomous mechanism; train its team of doctors and nurses; have a plan to invest and purchase modern medical examination and treatment equipment... to improve the quality of medical examination and treatment to serve the people, enhance the prestige and brand of the hospital;...

At the meeting, the leaders of the Trauma and Orthopedics Hospital also raised concerns about health insurance payments, thereby proposing the establishment of a professional council to resolve issues of disagreement in health insurance examination and treatment appraisal between the health insurance agency and medical facilities.