Public Hospital in Vietnam

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IV/ Solutions and realistic service improvement

The hospital should perform a four-step procedure in order to decrease the waiting time including patient reception, clinical examination, diagnosis, hospital billing, then prescribed drug dispensing. Thus, with the new procedure which will be discussed below can reduce the waiting time dramatically.

First, hospital needs to invest in improving the infrastructure of the clinic, increasing the use of information technology, allocating enough capacity (including human resources and idle facilities) and adding necessary equipment. Also, medical staffs including doctors and nurses should be prepared for peaked hour or unexpected circumstances such as accidents, epidemic… Importantly, Little’s Law can be applied to observe the relationship between the average number of patients in a hospital, their arrival rate, and the average time they spend there so that improvement can be made to increase patient satisfaction rate. On the other hand, to avoid errors in the exchange of information between the patient and the doctor, barcode, magnetic card can be used to identify the patient instead of the traditional way, using physical medical record.

Second, the process of patient welcoming, the hospital should use automatic transmitters, allowing patients check in by themselves by showing their medical ID, health insurance card... Also, to shorten the examination process, the Ministry of Health of Vietnam also requires hospitals to simplify payment-related procedures, avoiding multiple hospital fees.

Last but not least, in the hospital, collecting and paying hospital fees make patients and their families very hard to save their time. Usually, when hospitalized, the patient will have to pay an amount of money in advance to pay hospital fees. Then, during the treatment, the patient will pay for testing, ultrasound, screening which are appointed by the doctor. Assuming that information system has been successful in storing patient's information as well as health insurances parallel with up-to-date billing information, it is believed that with the new way, patients will not have to pay in advance but only need to submit health insurance card and make only one payment after everything is done. Finally, they can wait to get their prescribed medicine before leaving the hospital.

V/ References

- Fitzsimmons, J., & Bordoloi, Sanjeev. (2014). Service management: Operations, strategy, information technology (8th ed., The McGraw-Hill/Irwin series operations and decision sciences). New York: McGraw-Hill

- Tonges, M. C., & Das, T. (1995). EFFECTIVE HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATION: LINKING STRATEGIES WITH WORK REDESIGN. International Journal Of Organizational Analysis (1993 - 2002), 3(2), 121.