Xuyen's comments were made yesterday, Oct 19, during a visit to Cho Ray Hospital in HCM City.
She said the hospital has succeeded in reducing some of the overload it usually experienced by sending its doctors to offer guidance and improve healthcare in other provinces under Programme 1816 initiated by the Ministry of Health.
Xuyen said that Programme 1816, implemented since 2008, has improved the professional knowledge and skills of doctors at provincial hospitals and at grassroots healthcare centres.
In HCM City alone, 24 hospitals have joined the programme and supported hospitals in 28 provinces, according to the city's Department of Health.
This has seen drastic reductions in the transfer of patients to city hospitals. For example, the Phu Yen General Hospital has reduced by 90 per cent the number of patients with brain injuries that it used to transfer to city hospitals, while the Sa Dec General Hospital has effected a similar reduction of 30 per cent in patients with cardiological diseases.
However, among the city's hospitals, Cho Ray Hospital stood out in the number of ways it has effectively implemented Progr-amme 1816, Xuyen said.
The hospital has set up a steering board for the programme and drawn up specific plans to implement it, she noted.
It has studied patient transfer trends to identify the needs of different hospitals in surrounding provinces and devised ways to help them improve diagnosis and treatment, she added.
For example, among the patients that it typically accepted from the provincial hospital in Binh Phuoc Province, it found that help was needed in the Orthopedics, Neurology and General Medicine wards, said Tran Quyet Tien, deputy director of Cho Ray Hospital.
Doctors from these wards were then sent to Binh Phuoc Hospital to train the latter's medical staff, he added.
Consultations
Meanwhile, Tien said that his hospital was also providing professional advice via phones to doctors in provincial hospitals so that the latter were kept up to date with the latest medical developments.
All these measures have seen the number of patients transferred from provincial hospitals to the Cho Ray Hospital reduce by 25 per cent in 2009, 17.45 per cent in 2010 and 18.2 per cent in the first six months of this year, he said.
Typically, of the total number of patients visiting the hospital for check-ups and treatment, 78 per cent come from other provinces, a hospital study found.
The hospital has so far supported 15 hospitals and made 380 doctors's visits to provincial hospitals, he said, adding that 7,379 doctors in provincial hospitals have benefited from the exercise.
Nguyen Truong Son, director of Cho Ray Hospital, said that besides Programme 1816, the hospital had carried out several measures to reduce its overload.
For instance, it has increased its working hours for check ups on Saturday, starting as early as 6am on weekdays as well. It has also co-operated with other well-equipped hospitals in the city to ensure timely treatment, and also promoted the provision of healthcare services at home.
Son told the Health Ministry that it was important to set up the model of primary care providers for families and promote the telemedicine concept whereby doctors at city hospitals and those at remote health clinics exchange information and experiences via the Internet.
This would minimise the practice of transferring patients to bigger hospitals except in cases where it was absolutely necessary, he said.
Xuyen said that the ministry had always pursued a policy to invest funds in upgrading facilities at city hospitals, especially those experiencing regular overload of patients.
Cho Ray Hospital has benefited from this policy, she added.
Xuyen also asked the Health Ministry's Examination and Treatment Department to encourage other city hospitals that have joined the programme to emulate Cho Ray Hospital.
VietNamNet/Viet Nam News
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