Taking the quality of people's health care as a measure of medical ethics

(Baonghean) -With the goal of building and developing a synchronous and gradually modernized medical examination and treatment network in a fair and effective manner, in accordance with the socio-economic development conditions of the locality, over the past time, Nghe An Health sector has been gradually improving the quality of services to meet the people's medical examination and treatment needs, striving to achieve and exceed health targets.

Over the past years, with the attention, leadership and support of the Ministry of Health, the Provincial Party Committee, the People's Council, the Provincial People's Committee and all levels of sectors, districts and cities, the system of medical examination and treatment facilities in our province has been invested with many different sources of capital to build new or upgrade, renovate infrastructure, and supplement medical equipment. The whole province has 41 hospitals, including 10 provincial hospitals (3 general hospitals); 17 district general hospitals (22 general clinics) and Nghia Dan Medical Center; the total number of hospital beds is 6,051 (reaching 20.6 beds/10,000 people); there are 8 private hospitals, 359 private health service facilities and 3 non-industry hospitals located in the area with a total of 756 beds (reaching 2.7 beds/10,000 people). There are 480 commune health stations and by the end of 2012, 166/480 communes (accounting for 34.6%) met the national criteria for commune health; 87.7% of commune health stations have doctors; 100% of health stations have midwives or obstetricians; 476/480 commune, ward and town health stations in the whole province provide initial medical examination and treatment with health insurance (reaching 99.37%).



Endoscopic surgery to treat cancer at Nghe An Oncology Hospital. Photo: Tu Thanh

With such an infrastructure system, in recent times, Nghe An health sector has focused on promoting and developing new techniques. In particular, in 2012, open heart surgery was successfully implemented at the Provincial General Hospital (53 cases) and Nghe An Obstetrics and Pediatrics Hospital (3 cases)...

The Health sector has actively and proactively received cadres from the Central Government and rotated cadres from the province to the grassroots level according to Project 1816. In 2012, there were 11 cadres from the Central Government to support and transfer new techniques to units such as: Endocrinology Hospital, Provincial Hematology and Blood Transfusion Center, Northwest Regional General Hospital... The provincial level has rotated 21 cadres to support lower levels in examining and treating common diseases.

In addition to the achieved results, in 2012, Nghe An Health sector still faced many shortcomings and challenges: The demand for medical examination and treatment of the people increased in both number of times and quality requirements, while the response capacity of the sector increased but not commensurately. Some sensitive and urgent issues of the sector have not been satisfactorily resolved, such as: Medical ethics of a part of medical staff are not good; violations of professional ethics of some medical staff are slow to be resolved, reducing the trust of the people. Overcrowding in hospitals, patients having to share beds in provincial hospitals and some district hospitals is quite common, leading to limited quality of patient care; overuse of paraclinical tests, overuse of antibiotics, and complementary medicines causing costs for patients; medical waste treatment systems in medical examination and treatment facilities have not met requirements... The development of new techniques is uneven, mainly concentrated in provincial hospitals. Management of private medical practice is still difficult.

In order to build Nghe An into a high-tech medical center in the North Central region, improve the quality of medical examination and treatment, and meet the health care needs of the people, in the coming time, Nghe An health sector will carry out many solutions, focusing on the following contents: actively and proactively monitoring epidemics, preventing epidemics, natural disasters... to prevent large and medium epidemics from occurring.

Advise on the development, submit to the Provincial People's Committee for approval and implement the Project "Improving the quality of medical examination and treatment in Nghe An province, period 2013-2020" in the direction of determining the list of techniques that must be implemented in Nghe An until 2020 and for each hospital to focus on investment, build a roadmap for each hospital to implement according to the set plan, prioritizing the fields of cardiovascular, oncology, obstetrics... Take the quality of people's health care services as a measure of medical ethics of medical staff; continue to well implement Directive No. 06 CT/TW on consolidating and perfecting the grassroots health network, Resolution No. 08 NQ/TU of the Provincial Party Standing Committee on improving the quality of medical examination and treatment and health care for people in the following years, the Project "Improving medical ethics in medical examination and treatment facilities" and a number of other important projects...

Bui Dinh Long - Provincial Party Committee Member, Director of Department of Health