In the middle of December 2013, The Ministry of Health issued, for the first time, the set of criteria for hospital quality. Accordingly, each hospital is required to satisfy 83 criteria, comprising 19 criteria related to patients, 14 criteria for professional personnel development, 38 criteria for professional practices, eight criteria for quality improvement and four criteria for specific specialties. This set of criteria is expected to improve the current quality of hospitals in Vietnam.
After publishing, the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the local Health Department has performed a sample inspection at some hospitals. FV Hospital was one of the first hospitals selected.
The inspection was performed mainly in the following fields:
- Patient orientation
- Professional personnel development
- Professional practices
- Quality improvement
- Specific criteria for obstetric and paediatric specialties.
FV Hospital was evaluated based on the application of 80 of 83 criteria (the three criteria excluded were not applicable to private hospitals like FVH). Each criterion was rated on a scale from one to five, with five denoting excellence. According to the conclusion from the Department of Health, FV Hospital was one of four hospitals in HCM City to obtain the highest scores.
The Department of Health recognised FVH’s efforts in pursuing its quality journey, especially in achieving JCI accreditation for international quality standards. FV Hospital was deemed to have excellent maintenance standards. After 10 years of operation, inspectors said the hospital was very clean and still seemed new.
In addition, the Department of Health also recognised FVH’s method of recording feedback from patients about hospital services; FVH is one of the few healthcare centres to employ staff members responsible for asking patients for their comments and analysing the insights gained to assess how FVH can improve the quality of its services on an ongoing basis.
FVH’s nursing team was assessed as efficient, enthusiastic, professional and dedicated. Areas for evaluation included their ability to determine which patients are high-risk and classifying each group of risk with a different colour, such as red for patients with a history of allergies. Inspectors said many other hospitals need to follow this method.
FV Hospital was found to have a professional and efficient recordkeeping system. All hospital activities, from patient admittal and medical record storage to equipment procurement and management, are administered by the Orion online system. This information storage system allows doctors to access all available information about any given patient, facilitating medical consultations and treatment. In addition, this system also supports the entire hospital management effectively to offer better services to patients.
In particular, the Department of Health recognised FV Hospital as having a good staff motivation policy, with very competitive salaries compared to those offered at other hospitals. In spite of being a private hospital, FVH offers its doctors and staff many opportunities to attend training courses both in Vietnam and overseas. This ensures that FV Hospital always has a team of highly competent personnel to maintain, improve and develop hospital service quality and provide high-quality treatment and care for patients.
So far, FV Hospital has always worked closely with the Ministry of Health in realising its goal of improving quality. The Ministry of Health regularly arranges programmes to enable staff from other hospitals to visit FVH and learn from FVH’s experiences in quality assurance and management. The Ministry of Health has also entrusted FVH’s Head of Clinical Assurance with helping to compose circular specifying criteria, documents and procedures for medical facility quality standards as part of its editing team.
FVH is also involved in developing curriculum for continuous training on hospital quality management. FV Hospital, now with the above recognition and assessment from the Department of Health, is proud to be a pioneer in improving hospital quality in Vietnam.
