Mr. Nguyen Van Hung (born in 1976, Thanh Hoa) shared: “I really hope that the proposal to eliminate the referral procedure for people with serious illnesses will be approved. My family has had someone with cancer for the past few years, so I understand the need to apply for a referral. Apply from the commune to the district, to the province, and then to the central government. Taking a week off work and spending money to apply for a referral, while the patient needs timely treatment. The worst thing is that the sick patient must also go to all those medical facilities, line up, wait for examination, and then receive a referral. It is really tiring."
Sharing the same wish about some procedures in transferring to another hospital, Mr. Vu Van Ty - who is being treated for lung cancer at Tan Trieu K Hospital - expressed: "It is clear that cancer cannot be treated at the district and provincial levels and must be treated at the central level with high expertise. So why do we have to force patients to apply for a transfer certificate to 3-4 levels like that? The Ministry of Health should have recognized this inadequacy a long time ago to make changes, otherwise patients will suffer too much."
When asked about the suffering of referral papers, most patients at K Hospital shared the same wish: We are patients with serious illnesses, treatment is already very tiring, we just hope the procedures will stop tormenting us.
For patients who have just been diagnosed with a serious illness, it is also very difficult to get a referral letter. Ms. Nguyen Thi Nga (born in 1969, Ninh Binh) went to Hanoi to work for a living but unfortunately got kidney disease and had to undergo dialysis. To get a referral letter to Hanoi, her daughter had to work very hard to get one but was unsuccessful. Seeing someone telling her that she could get the letter for 3 million, hoping that her mother would be treated soon, she had to accept the loss of money. “It is true that having a serious illness requires a lot of hardship. Although health insurance covers the cost of treatment, getting the papers to receive health insurance is not easy, it takes a lot of money…” - Ms. Nga lamented.
For many years, central hospitals have been well aware of the shortcomings of administrative procedures for patients with cancer, cardiovascular diseases, kidney dialysis, etc. Every January, patients with serious illnesses rush to apply for referrals to the hospital. Many patients miss their treatment, their illness gets worse, or their treatment results are reduced simply because they have not yet applied for a referral. If referrals for patients with serious illnesses are eliminated, the burden on patients will be greatly reduced.
Earlier, on the morning of October 24, the National Assembly worked in the hall, listening to the Government present the submission and the review report of the Social Committee on the Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Health Insurance (HI). Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan said that the draft law amends the regulations on medical examination and treatment in the right and wrong line (cross-line) updated according to the technical expertise level of the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment in 2023. The procedure for transferring to a higher level of expertise for some rare diseases, serious diseases... will be eliminated to reduce procedures, create convenience, reduce out-of-pocket expenses for people, and save costs for the fund...
According to the Minister, the draft law clearly demonstrates the spirit of administrative reform, medical examination and treatment procedures, reducing paperwork, increasing the application of information technology, decentralization and maximum delegation of power, creating convenience for people, agencies and organizations.
