Traditional medicine fails to meet standards

This
was revealed at a meeting organised by the Ministry of Health and the Vietnam
Social Insurance Agency on June 5 in Hanoi.

Some
traditional medicine hospitals do not have doctors specialised in diagnostic
imaging, leading to less patients coming to the hospitals as they cannot
benefit from the services, according to Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, deputy head of the
ministry’s Traditional Medicine Management Department.

Another
shortcoming is a lack of detailed instructions for insurance agencies on how to
pay health insurance fees for patients diagnosed with chronic diseases, who are
the typical patients visiting traditional medicine hospitals.

Normally,
patients with chronic diseases need to be treated for a long time.

Thus,
the lack of instructions affects patients and heath insurance agencies as they
are confused on how to pay health insurance fees for these patients.

At
present, many medical universities declined to train traditional-medicine
doctors in modern medicine, Tuan said.

“This
means traditional medicine hospitals fail to meet standards required by the
health ministry to become primary healthcare facilities where health insurance
card holders can register for examination and treatment,” he said.

Pham
Luong Son, deputy general director of the Vietnam Social Insurance Agency
pointed out defects in implementing and paying for
patients treated with traditional medicines.

Some
traditional medicine hospitals were found to keep patients for longer than
necessary, he said.

Son
also said the price of ba kich (Indian Mulberry) – a kind of traditional
medicine, differed between localities. For instance, the price was 338,500 VND (15
USD) per kilo in Quang Nam province, 630,000 VND (28 USD) in Thanh Hoa province
and 730,000 VND (32 USD) in Dien Bien province.

He
asked for the difference to be clarified.

He
gave an example that an insurance agency branch in Binh Dinh province revoked 1
billion VND (44,000 USD) after finding a difference between the real price of
traditional medicine with the price a local hospital quoted to the agency in
2016.

How
to fix

Tuan
said inconsistencies in policies were behind the .

He
asked the ministry and the insurance agency to sit down together and issue a
consistent policy to fix the shortcomings, Tuan said.

Son
asked the ministry to assess examining and treating patients by traditional
medicine at national level.

He
also advised the ministry to evaluate the effectiveness of traditional medicine
in treating patients with health insurance cards at hospitals.

The
ministry was asked to publicise the average bid winning prices for each kind of
traditional medicine, he added.

Deputy Minister Nguyen Viet Tien urged reaching
a consensus between the two agencies to deal with the shortcomings soon.-VNA