Faced with the situation of scans not being scanned for 6 minutes and being refused payment, the Ministry of Health requests not to use electro-optical techniques as a basis for health insurance assessment and payment.
And this is a necessary "steering" move in the context that the healthcare system is increasingly digitalized, standardized and under pressure to control costs.
Medicine is not an industrial production line. An X-ray can take less time if the patient cooperates well, the machinery is modern, and the technician is proficient.
Conversely, there are complex cases that require more time. If we only look at the machine operating time on the PACS system or DICOM file, we only see the surface of the process.
Because behind that is a chain of operations: receiving, confirming information, exploiting prehistory, guiding posture, reading movies, commenting and consulting on results.
Therefore, the fact that social insurance agencies in some localities and medical examination and treatment facilities take machine running time as a basis for assessment is no different from evaluating a surgery based only on the number of minutes the knife touches the skin.
This regulation inadvertently ignores professional factors, experience and clinical value – things that determine the quality of medical services.
Not only that, the story of "under 6 minutes of X-rays" also reflects a larger risk in medicine, which is the shift from standardization to routine in all fields.
In an effort to control the abuse of the health insurance fund, management agencies tend to look for quantitative indicators for comparison. That is not wrong, but when the indicator becomes the sole criterion, replacing the overall assessment, management will fall into a mechanical state.
Health insurance is a social security policy, designed to ensure the right to access health services for people. If patients are properly diagnosed, perform correct techniques, have clear diagnostic value but are still refused payment just because they lack a few minutes of comparative reference, then trust in the system will be eroded and medical facilities will also fall into a passive position.
Therefore, the Ministry of Health's requirement that the examination and payment must be based on the overall medical record, the suitability of the indication, compliance with the main professional steps and the actual conditions of the medical examination and treatment facility is an important message.
In the digital age, data is very important. But data is just a tool to support decision-making, not an alternative to professional judgment.
Effective management is management through a multi-dimensional system of criteria, combining quantification and qualitative, between control and trust, and cannot "push difficulties" towards medical facilities, causing patients to suffer losses as the social insurance agency has done.
The Ministry of Health's "whistle" to refuse health insurance payment when taking X-rays for less than 6 minutes this time has contributed to protecting a core principle of medicine that puts patients' interests and professional values first.
And that is the right measure, not a chronograph, counting every minute the machine runs.
