Private clinics offer top services

23:35' 15/04/2008 (GMT+7)
Patients are treated at An Sinh General Hospital’s kidney dialysis centre in HCM City. The hospital receives social insurance patients, helping to relieve the burden on State facilities.
VietNamNet Bridge - These clinics cater to health insurance policy holders and ease State hospital loads.
Private health services in HCM City are seen as a positive trend in the health sector.
The services, following Government Decree No 63 in 2005, encouraged private clinics to cater to health insurance policy holders.
The services aim to help reduce the overload in State-owned hospitals and increase medical access.
According to HCM City Social Insurance Agency’s Health Insurance Division, the city now has around 100 private clinics, which are qualified enough to provide health insurance beneficiaries with health care services.

Last year, there were around 30 private hospitals and clinics offering health insurance services to 100,000 patients, including Sai Gon Eye Hospital, Phuoc An Medical Centre (HEPA), An Sinh Hospital, Hoan My Hospital, FV Hospital, Medic Centre, Hong Duc Hospital and others.
Private hospitals which take part in providing health insurance services grealty contributed to providing better health care to the community, helping to reduce the burden on State-owned hospitals, Bui Duc Trang, vice chairman of HCM City Social Insurance Agency, said.
Luu Thi Thanh Huyen, deputy head of Payment Survey Division under HCM City Social Insurance Agency, said some 30 to 40 per cent of the city population were registering for health insurance services and that number continued surge annually.
Preferential payment was also a factor that had attracted more and more private clinics to participate in providing such services, Huyen said, adding that every quarter the authority provided the clinics with 80 per cent on advance of payment.
Trang said that while some State-owned hospitals were not affordable enough to provide good quality services to insurance card holders, private clinics attached special importance to services, equipment and even a reasonable fee to attract more patients.

Among the city’s private hospitals, An Sinh General Hospital received 30 per cent of the city’s social insurance patients, and 85 per cent of patients in the kidney dialysis department were covered by social insurance.
Phuoc An Medical Centre, which was the first private clinic in HCM City to provide treatment for patients with insurance cards, provides good care to its social insurance patients. In 2007, the clinic attracted some 50,000 social insurance card holders.
Nguyen Thi Huynh Mai (District 10), a health insurance card holder, who received a health check at HEPA, said she was provided the best service at the private clinic, explaining that she did not have to wait for long time to meet doctors, thanks to IT applications for medical check-ups.
Ton That Quynh Trung, Phuoc An Medical Centre’s general director, said the centre had invested over VND10 billion (US$625,000) to purchase the latest medical equipment for better services in one of its branches.
He said that after the recent decision from the Ministry of Health to revoke the requirement that insurance service oly apply to family members if 10 per cent of families in one city ward wanted to buy insurance cards, the medical centre received an additional 15,000 insurance card holders.
Trung said private clinics were racing to invest in upgrading and building more facilities to offer health insurance beneficiaries the best medical services. That is the Government strategy to provide health insurance to every citizens by 2010.

He said the Government’s policy allowing private clinics to provide such services to health insurance beneficiaries brought fame for the health insurance sector.