Medical sector promotes cashless payment in medical examination and treatment

On September 20, the Ministry of Health held a national online conference on promoting the implementation of non-cash electronic payments in the health sector. At the central bridge point, there were Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, representatives of the State Bank, the Ministry of Information and Communications, and relevant departments and agencies in attendance.

At Nghe An bridge, Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee Dinh Viet Hong chaired the conference. Also attending were representatives of a number of departments, branches, provincial hospitals, a number of commercial banks, general hospitals, and medical centers near Vinh City.

View of Nghe An bridge.

According to Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, in recent times, the health sector has promoted the application of information technology, ensuring technical infrastructure to strengthen management, improve service quality and people's satisfaction in the field of public administration, medical examination and treatment, disease prevention, health promotion and training of medical and pharmaceutical human resources. This is also the foundation for implementing electronic payment for services in the health sector.

A day ago, the Minister of Health issued a Directive on promoting the implementation of cashless payment of hospital fees and tuition fees in the health sector. Accordingly, the Minister requested heads of medical examination and treatment facilities and heads of medical and pharmaceutical training facilities located in urban areas to arrange human resources and use many electronic payment solutions to meet the needs of the people. In addition, it is necessary to quickly complete the hospital information system (HIS) and deploy the use of electronic invoices.

Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien and delegates inspected the hospital payment card making department at medical examination and treatment facilities of Vietnam Payment Solutions Joint Stock Company (VNPAY). Photo: Duong Ngoc/VNA

The Minister requested the Department of Medical Examination and Treatment Management to study and propose adding criteria on electronic payment to the set of criteria for hospital quality assessment. The Ministry of Health also requested medical facilities to deploy non-cash electronic payment methods at their units, meeting people's non-cash electronic payment requirements before December 31, 2019.

Vietnam currently has more than 70 banks providing Mobile Banking application services and 31 e-wallets of intermediary payment service providers that can participate in providing cashless hospital fee payment solutions. Nearly 14,000 medical facilities use bank accounts. Currently, there are many non-cash payment methods such as: using cards at POS, ATM or installing cards on phones for payment; using phones to use banking applications or e-wallets or scanning QR codes for payment.