Promoting patient-centered quality health care in Vietnam

The third National Hospital Quality Forum has started its work on 18-19 of August 2016 in Hanoi. It was launched by H.E. Mr Bruno Angelet, Head of the EU Delegation in Vietnam and H.E. Associate Professor Dr Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, Minister of Health of Vietnam.

 

At the launch of the Third National Hospital Quality Forum Mr Bruno Angelet, Head of the EU Delegation in Vietnam underlined that "the European Union had been supporting the Ministry of Health over 25 years in improving the quality and accessibility of care at all levels. The right of the citizen for health and access to quality health care is among the basic core values in the European Union and EU supports its partner countries around the world to attain to those principles.”

The Third National Hospital Quality Forum is held in Hanoi on August 18 and August 19, 2016 for participants form central level and 32 provinces of the Northern Vietnam. Similar event will be held in Ho Chi Minh City in September 2016 for the 33 provinces in the South of Vietnam.

More than 400 participants from the central, provincial, city and district hospitals, representatives of Universities, Private Practitioners Association and Association of Private Hospitals are participating in the discussions, supported by the experts from the European Union and WHO. The major objective of the discussions throughout the Forum is to increase exchange of good practices among different hospitals in implementation of the quality management in hospitals, assuring the patient safety and using the patient feedback as a method to improve patient experiences in the hospital.  The international experience and best practices in the other countries are presented and discussed. 

 

Speaking at the Forum, Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien noted that “Improvement of health service quality is an important and key activity in the management of medical examination and treatment in health sector. This area of work has always received core attention at the central and provincial level. However, besides infrastructure investments, improving the personal responsibility of the staff, additional human and financial resources will be still needed to strengthen the health institutions, improve the patient safety and patient experience”.

 

Since 20011 European Union is continuously supporting the MoH in Vietnam in the process of quality improvement in health facilities. With the support from the EU funded project Health Sector Capacity Support Project (2011 – 2014) the MoH adopted the Hospital Quality Standards (Circular 19/2013/TT-BYT dated 12/7/2013 on guidelines to management of service quality in hospitals, Decision 4858/QĐ-BYT on piloting of the set of hospital quality assessment criteria). In 2015 The European Union has allocated a conditional grant to the Government in amount of 100 million Euro for the period of three years as a direct budget support to be used to decrease disparities between rich and poor by concentrating efforts in 10 poorest regions of Vietnam as well as to support the Ministry of Health of Vietnam in increasing quality of services at grass root and hospital levels. Part of the proceeding of the budget support is channelled to increase application and implementation of the quality management and patient feedback system in Vietnam. European Union Health Facility, established by the European Union Delegation in the framework of the HSPSP phase II, supports the Ministry of Health and the Medical Services Administration, in particular, to achieve this target through a number of activities focused on building the awareness and capacities of the health managers in quality management practices.

 

Source: EU-HF