What solution reduces the inconvenience for patients when requesting a referral?

According to people's feedback, there are currently many cases of patients with serious illnesses such as cancer who are being treated at a higher level and have a follow-up appointment. However, when the appointment comes, they are forced to return to a lower level to ask for a referral.

With cumbersome procedures, even without financial means, many people still give up on applying for a referral, even skipping follow-up visits, affecting the treatment process.

Regarding this issue, Ms. Tran Thi Trang - Director of the Department of Health Insurance ( Ministry of Health ) admitted that the above situation does occur. However, not all facilities have this situation.

Ms. Trang said that the Ministry of Health has had solutions such as Directive 25 issued in 2020 on continuing to strengthen management and improve the quality of health insurance examination and treatment, which requires facilities to classify re-examination appointments.

At the same time, there are also regular annual dispatches urging medical facilities to separate follow-up appointments so that too many patients do not accumulate at the same time, causing long waiting times.

Regarding this re-examination appointment, Ms. Trang said she is taking note to have simpler procedures in the process of issuing referral papers.

Event - What solutions reduce the inconvenience for patients when requesting a referral? — Ms. Tran Thi Trang - Director of Health Insurance Department (Ministry of Health).

"Instead of leaders signing, we can delegate to departments in medical facilities so that people don't have to wait," Ms. Trang said.

According to Ms. Trang, Decree 75/2023/ND-CP amending and supplementing detailed regulations and instructions on measures to implement a number of articles of the Law on Health Insurance also has regulations related to re-examination appointment papers.

There are solutions to reduce administrative procedures as well as inconvenience for patients. If the patient cannot return within 10 days of the appointment, the patient can contact the medical facility in advance to request another appointment. This way, there is no need to re-apply for an appointment and no need to wait.

In addition, in the near future, the Ministry of Health will apply communication technology and digitize documents such as referral papers, hospital discharge papers and follow-up appointment papers. Currently, this unit is seeking opinions from medical facilities and social insurance.

“After that, it will be tested for 6 months. After the 6-month test period, the Ministry of Health will make adjustments and officially issue them,” said Ms. Trang.

Ms. Trang also said that a solution being studied is to sign these documents electronically to make it faster. Accordingly, department leaders can sign from anywhere.

Currently, it is the end of the year, Ms. Trang said that for medical examination and treatment documents such as referral papers and re-examination papers, the facilities will issue them this year, instead of having to wait until January 2024 to sign, reducing administrative procedures, reducing inconvenience for patients, and improving the quality of medical examination and treatment.

Event - What solutions reduce the inconvenience for patients when requesting a referral? (Figure 2). — Reduce administrative procedures, reduce inconvenience for patients, improve the quality of medical examination and treatment.

Previously, patients being treated at district and provincial hospitals who wanted to be transferred to higher-level hospitals had to apply for a referral letter, which many patients said was cumbersome in terms of procedures and they proposed to abolish referral letters for medical examination and treatment.

Talking to Nguoi Dua Tin in the hallway of the National Assembly, National Assembly Deputy Nguyen Tri Thuc - Director of Cho Ray Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City delegation said that there are two opinions on this issue.

People think that why do they need a referral? It's very inconvenient and they can go to any facility they want.

He and doctors at upper-level hospitals personally believe that if the referral system is abolished, upper-level hospitals will benefit. Because all patients will flow to upper-level hospitals, but this is a short-term benefit. However, in the long run, it will disrupt the health system and bring no benefits.

The director of Cho Ray Hospital said that removing referral papers would only benefit one individual, for a certain period of time, but would cause many consequences, and the healthcare system would be paralyzed in the long term.

Mr. Thuc believes that the fundamental solution is that lower-level healthcare must ensure expertise and create trust for the people. When people have trust in the grassroots healthcare, they will not have to go anywhere. How to build trust requires a long-term process .

Source