Over 88 percent of population covered by health insurance

Hanoi (VNA) - Over 83.6 million people across Vietnam have participated in health insurance so far, bringing the health insurance coverage to 88 percent of the national population, heard a conference on March 26. 

Hosted by the Vietnam Social Security (VSS), the conference aimed to provide periodic information related to social and health insurance in March 2019.

In March, as many as 37 people registered for inpatient medical checkup and treatment with treatment cost of over 500 million VND per time, while seven other cases had treatment cost of over 1 billion VND per time. 

Positive outcomes

At the conference, Vu Quoc Tuan, deputy chief of the VSS's secretariat, said the application of information technology and administrative procedure reforms to ensure benefits of health insurance card holders has proven effective.

Health insurance participants have actively looked up the process of joining health insurance, the validity of their health insurance cards on the VSS’s portal at https://www.baohiemxahoi.gov.vn/tracuu/.

The assessment system provides functions to support health facilities to search for health insurance card-related information, using quick response (QR) code plastering application to automatically receive information on health insurance cards to update it on medical examination and treatment management software, contributing to reducing the waiting time for medical examination and treatment.

With these applications, hospitals can search and update changed information for cases with renewed cards, change benefits of health insurance card holders under new rules, thus ensuring patients enjoy full medical examination and treatment benefits while being treated in hospitals.

Over 36 million people given check-up and treatment with health insurance

VSS Deputy General Director Dao Viet Anh said holders of health insurance cards are guaranteed benefits in line with legal provisions when they go for medical examination and treatment.

When the people participate in health insurance, they are paid all medical check-up and treatment expenses within the health insurance payment scope in accordance with legal regulations, he noted.

As of March 25, statistics on the health insurance assessment information system show that more than 36 million people registered for medical examination and treatment with health insurance with a total amount of over 19.3 trillion VND requested for payment.

Of the figure, 764 were inpatients with treatment cost of between 200-500 million VND per time.

VSS Deputy General Director Dao Viet Anh chairs the conference (Source: VietnamPlus)

A number of patients had their medical examination and treatment cost of up to billions of VND covered by health insurance. For example, the treatment cost of a patient holding health insurance card in Vinh Nguyen ward, Nha Trang city, the central province of Khanh Hoa, who was in the group of people living in island communes and districts, was fully covered by the State budget.

This patient was treated at Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City from December 24, 2018 to January 25, 2019, diagnosed with the lack of the factor 8 genre. The cost for treatment in this case was 1.07 billion VND, including 1 billion VND for medicine.

The second case - a patient in Kim Boi district, the northern mountainous province of Hoa Binh, who insured from the police, was paid for medical treatment in Bach Mai Hospital from October 30, 2018 to January 8, 2019.

The patient was diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction. The examination and treatment cost was up to 1.2 billion VND, of which the largest cost was 358 million VND for medicine.

Anh said, in recent times, the IT application has significantly contributed to the success of the social security policy, helping improve the efficiency of the fund management and ensure benefits for the people.

On November 26, 2018, the VSS issued Decision No. 2239/QD-BHXH on regulations software interconnection in managing the health insurance payment for medical examination and treatment.

Accordingly, the interconnection will be applied to health insurance card management software, assessment software, and centralized accounting software for managing and paying medical examination and treatment expenses covered by the medical insurance./.