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Part 1: Patient overload in provincial
hospitals but just few patients in district hospitals
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Patients
are too tired to wait for their health check up |
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Doctor Huynh Minh Hoang – Deputy
General of Dong Nai Health Department said that Dong Nai province currently has
19 general hospitals with 3,720 patient beds, of which 2,890 beds in
province-level hospitals and 680 beds in district-level ones. The patient
overload has mainly occurred in province-level hospitals, especially in
Obstetric
Department, Orthopedic Department, Department of Internal Medicine of General
Hospitals, and Digestion Departments of Children Hospitals. The hospitals have
to arrange more patient beds or 2-3 patients have to share one bed. Chidren
Hospital has just arranged more 300 patient beds, and Thong Nhat General
Hospital 820 patient beds and the ratio of 2 patients sharing one bed accounts
for 20%. The logical patient bed capacity is about 85%. However, the in-patient
bed capacity of Dong Nai province’s hospitals over the past year has been from
110-120%. Thong Nhat General Hospital has 600 patient beds but often welcomed
800-1,000 in-patients. Health clinics of provincial hospitals has a design
capacity of 300-500 patients per day; but in fact, the number of people coming
to hospitals for regular checkups has increased from 2 to 4-fold.
Moreover, patients often have to wait too long for their health
checkups. Le Thi Nga coming from Trang Dai Ward said “My 8-month child
had diarrhoea, so I took him to Children Hospital from
7:00 a.m. The patients were too crowded there, so I had to wait for my son’s
checkup until 11:00 a.m. Many patients had to go home and come back in the
afternoon to keep waiting for their checkups. Waiting for so long together with
my child’s illness made me feel more anxious”. Nguyen Thu Hang from Binh Da
Ward, Bien Hoa City complained “When I gave baby birth by cesarian operation at
Thong Nhat General Hospital, I have to share my bed with another patient. It was
so hot and inconvenient that I had to move to a better room. But poor patients
still suffer this inconvenience, let alone doctors are too busy and easy to get
angry with patients, so they tend to examine quickly and carelessly”. Regarding
the health check-up quality in the hospital overload, Doctor Hoang also said
that overload the of health clinics has not met the health checkup and treatment
demand of patients who need a convenient and quiet place. Patient overload and
the time patients waiting for their checkups would influence much on their
health. Every day, doctors have to examine hundreds of patients, thus the heath
checkup and treatment quality is also affected.
At the seminar, many doctors in district-level hospitals stated that
they have had few patients and there has been no patient overload like in other
province-level hospitals. Director of Long Khanh General Hospital Su Son said “Many
patients with minor illness often seek treatment in larger hospitals,
partly because the province-level hospitals offer
higher quality services and facilities than the district-level hospital. This
leads to hospital overload.”
Therefore, the main reason for this situation is
still a major topic of concern which requires practical solutions.
Reported by Lien Huong, Translated by Minh Minh
Part 2: Many concerns remained about solutions to patient overload in
hospitals