The demand for hospital services is increasing. What are the focuses among private hospitals in 2022 and what are the trends expected?

Nguyen Van De, chairman of the Vietnam Private Hospital Association

Recent surveys globally found that the private healthcare system is attracting a significant number of patients. For instance, according to a survey from the World Bank conducted in low-and middle-income countries, in 19 nations, both rich and poor families get more healthcare services from the private system than the public one. In Vietnam, private health facilities provide 43 per cent of outpatient medical examinations and treatment.

It is forecast that private investment in hospitals will continue to rise to benefit from growing local high-quality healthcare demands.

Digitalisation is the other trend among privately-run hospitals. They are heading to invest more in the development of a smart hospital model, and digital transformation.

How did the ongoing pandemic impact the performance of privately-run hospitals?

Many private healthcare facilities were seriously hit hard last year. Our survey showed that the number of patients in the first 10 months of 2021 at the facilities of our members strongly fell. Some even reported just 10 per cent of patients compared to the pre-pandemic period. Some clinics were even closed entirely. Most of our members sent their healthcare workers to support prevention and control of the pandemic, or shifted part of their facilities to treatment of COVID-19 patients as called on by the government and local authorities.

Despite these difficulties, many members expanded their investment in new hospitals and clinics to serve demand. Vietnam’s healthcare sector and private healthcare, in particular, are forecast to continue experiencing challenges due to the unpredictable nature of the pandemic.

Private hospitals are ramping up their digital transformation, Photo: Le Toan

Experts said that private investment in the healthcare sector remains challenging here. Have you seen improvements and what are the key factors to unlock potential inflows?

Despite positive changes in the healthcare policy, our members are still facing a number of legal barriers due to out-of-date legal documents. Some were issued 10 years ago and now fail to meet current market trends, thus hindering the development of the private healthcare system.

To facilitate private investment and business activities in the sector, while waiting for the Ministry of Health and relevant units to complete the draft amendments to the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment, we expect that the government considers and empower provincial and municipal departments of health to grant new operating licences, as well as adjust and revoke operating licenses for privately-run hospitals.

The healthcare sector should have general regulations about the classification of private-run and public-owned health facilities to prevent overlapping in the legal documents, thus creating fair treatment. We expect a timely revision of Circular No.30/2018/TT-BYT towards allowing lower-level hospitals to carry out techniques as central-level ones do for diseases in the field of internal medicine. We also propose a prioritised policy in human resources training to help private healthcare facilities deal with their manpower shortage and improve the service quality.

How can Vietnam replicate what regional neighbours have been doing in terms of making private healthcare investment a success?

Private healthcare is now yet to make up an appropriate proportion in the national health system as expected. The number of privately-run hospitals now accounts for only 10 per cent of the country’s total and this rate is far lower than other countries and is yet to tap huge potential and local healthcare demands. The top reason for the situation is related to state management. Renovating the management system is decisive to the development of private healthcare.

Firstly, it should define the relationship between public healthcare and private healthcare. For example, for the services related to satisfaction of customised healthcare demands, it should further encourage the private sector to invest in, while the public health system should focus on meeting general healthcare demands, especially preventive health. Developing private healthcare should not only focus on urban areas but also at the grassroots level.

Moreover, awareness of private healthcare as an inseparable part of the national healthcare system should be further increased. It should also provide fair treatment for private healthcare in all aspects of management like public healthcare. Together with encouraging policies, the government should have private medical protection policies, especially in underprivileged areas.

In regard to organisation, Vietnam needs to build a private healthcare development strategy as a long-term policy of the sector, while changing the way of management for private healthcare. Unlike public healthcare management, the essentials in private healthcare management are to manage investment purposes, but not only management of techniques and finance as it does with public healthcare. It is also necessary to quickly introduce models of private service facilities and classification of them based on investment purposes and then build and apply appropriate policies for each model.