Forecast of increased scale of medical service supply when merging Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Ba Ria - Vung Tau

Forecast of the scale of health service provision after the merger

On May 21, the Department of Health of Ho Chi Minh City said that at the seminar on assessing the size of the health service provision after merging as a basis for the practice of building the Ho Chi Minh City Health System when it was merged with the participation of the leaders of the Department of Health of Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau, delegates forecast the size of medical service supply after the merging of Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau.

When merging, the city's area will increase from 2,095 km2 to 6,772 km2; the population will increase from 9.9 million people to more than 13.7 million people. The demand for medical service supply will increase significantly in both demand and supply range, while medical resources will increase but certainly in the early stages will not be commensurate with the increase in demand and supply range.

The number of hospitals in the city increased from 134 to 164 hospitals, the number of hospital beds increased from 41,525 beds to 49,147 beds. The hospital bed/ten thousand people ratio will decrease from 41.7 to 31.3 (current target is 42 hospital beds/ten thousand people).

The number of doctors will increase from 20,727 to 24,629 doctors, the ratio of doctors/10,000 people will decrease from 20.8 to 13.08 (current target is 21 doctors/10,000 people). The rate of nurses per 10,000 people has decreased from 37 nurses per 10,000 people to 29 nurses per 10,000 people (current target is 39 nurses per 10,000 people).

In addition, the total number of public services of the city's health sector will increase from an average of more than 20,000 records/year to over 30,000 records/year.

Risk of overload at end-of-line hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City

The delegates also predicted that the number of medical examinations and treatments will increase at general and specialized hospitals at the end of the Ho Chi Minh City line after the merger.

The number of medical examinations is forecast to increase from over 42 million/year to over 51 million/year. The number of inpatient treatments will increase from over 2.2 million treatments/year to over 3.8 million treatments/year. If compared nationwide, the Ho Chi Minh City health system will provide about 30% of outpatient visits and more than 23% of inpatient treatments nationwide.

There is a risk that end-of-line hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City will be overloaded if the health sector does not proactively have appropriate immediate and long-term solutions. This is a big challenge but also an opportunity for the health sector to proactively research and expand more service facilities according to the model of facility 2, facility 3 of leading general and specialized hospitals in the new areas of Ba Ria - Vung Tau and Binh Duong provinces.

At the same time, the health sector needs to advise and supplement the planning of developing the health system such as developing more specialized medical clusters in the 4th and 5th in Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau provinces. Research, evaluate and adjust the target of beds/ten thousand people and the number of doctors and the number of nurses/ten thousand people to suit the new situation of the city.

In addition, the health sector of Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau has not yet implemented the provision of emergency services outside the hospital. This requires the Ho Chi Minh City health sector to soon have a solution to expand the network of satellite emergency stations in the two provinces.