'When I first took on the job as hospital director, I didn't know about finances. Sometimes people came to collect debts, departments collected and spent money on their own, and called for supplies without my knowledge,' said Associate Professor Dao Xuan Co, Director of Bach Mai Hospital.
On December 12, Bach Mai Hospital (Hanoi) exchanged experiences in digital transformation and building electronic medical records with Cho Ray Hospital (Ho Chi Minh City).
According to Associate Professor Dao Xuan Co, Director of the hospital, this medical facility has now completed electronic medical records. Currently, the entire hospital uses a common software, making everything from patient admissions to discharges, finances, supplies, and pharmaceuticals transparent.
During the 3 years of fighting the pandemic, the unit encountered difficulties, hospital fees were added to health insurance prices, causing an imbalance in revenue and expenditure, resulting in thousands of billions of dong in debt... During this time, Mr. Co said that many employees had to do many jobs to make a living, from selling online, pasting votive offerings, and some people left to go to other units.
In terms of technology, the entire hospital uses hundreds of software, each department has its own choice, cannot connect together, the machines are old and broken.
“When I took over as director, I did not know how much money the hospital had. There were even businesses that came knocking on the door to collect debts, debts that I did not know about. Some businesses even hired gangsters to deliver invoices of 30 billion VND in debt. In addition, there were situations where departments ordered supplies themselves, departments had on-site collection and payment services, and companies were called to bring machinery into joint ventures for direct cooperation, but I did not know. There were even units that intervened in how many cases a day, the director did not know," said Mr. Co.
The director added that one day the board of directors received a notice to close the cardiovascular intervention unit because it ran out of supplies.
Faced with this situation, the hospital's Board of Directors is determined to carry out digital transformation reforms to make everything transparent, clear, and "unified". The hospital must immediately start making electronic medical records, using a common software. At that time, the board of directors will clearly know the number of patients entering and leaving.
Associate Professor Vu Van Giap, Deputy Director of Bach Mai Hospital, who is in charge of digital transformation, shared that the unit dreams of moving towards a smart, paperless hospital. The hospital's vision is that all patients only need to use smartphones when coming for medical examination and treatment, doctors and nurses only need tablets when going to the ward and examining patients; storing complete patient information. The hospital also really wants to deploy electronic health records.
Doctor Giap said that although Bach Mai Hospital is a special-class hospital, it started its dream of comprehensive digital transformation on a rudimentary foundation, truly "rising from the bottom" with an old, broken information technology infrastructure, with some machines not turning on.
But with the determination of the entire hospital, after only 2 weeks of official implementation, Bach Mai Hospital has completely stopped using paper medical records, switching entirely to electronic medical records. The unit has chosen open source software, implemented for free in medical facilities, without bidding, but only costs installation and implementation instructions, helping to save a lot.
VN (according to Vietnamnet)