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Nov 16, 2018 / 12:45

Satellite hospital project helps reduce burden at downtown hospitals in Vietanm

The downtown hospitals should only focus on treatment requiring high technology, patients with common diseases should be treated in the satellite hospitals to avoid overcrowding.

Satellite hospitals have helped reduce patient overloads at hospitals in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the Ministry of Health reported at a conference on November 15 to review the five-year (2013-2018) scheme of building satellite hospitals in Hanoi and HCMC neighboring provinces. 
 
Illustration photo
Illustration photo
Speaking at the conference, Minster of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said the project helps reduce the number of patients referred from provincial hospitals to downtown hospitals in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh, which is the cause to overcrowding at these healthcare centers.  

The downtown hospitals should only focus on treatment requiring high technology, patients with common diseases should be treated in the satellite hospitals to avoid overcrowding, Tien added.

She stressed that doctors of central hospitals would have more time to do scientific research and develop modern techniques if their treatment burden was shared by colleagues at the provincial hospital.
 
According to a report by the Medical Service Administration (MSA) under the Ministry of Health, over the past 10 years, central hospitals are in a state of severe overloading, with bed occupancy at 90-110%. 

According to the MSA’s statistics, twenty three central hospitals and 127 satellite have been built across the country after five years of implementation. Special priorities have been given to 10 professional fields that experience serious patient overcrowding, namely cardiovascular care, surgery, cancer treatment, obstetrics and pediatrics, emergency response and first aid, clinical hematology, heart and injury surgery.  

MSA Director Luong Ngoc Khue said that doctors from 23 central hospitals have trained nearly 2,000 medical techniques to  physicians in provincial hospitals. Many complicated techniques were transferred successfully such as liver surgery from the E hospital and digestion and urinary cancer surgeries from the K (Cancer) Hospital.

Besides, the Ministry of Health requires the satellite hospital be well-prepared. Doctors at central level will have less time dedicated to treatment and the higher level hospital after the transferring technology will not receive the patients to perform that technique anymore, taking the time to perform high technology and scientific research, Khue said.