Hanoi (VNA)🧸 - The Ministry of Health (MoH) is set to launch a project on enhancing professional capacities, transferring technology, and developing a network of satellite hospitals for 2025-2030 period, aiming to reduce the rate of patients referred to higher-level hospitals by at least 5%.

This information was shared by a representative from the Medical Examination and Treatment Management Department at the 32nd Scientific Conference organised by the Ministry of Health and Bach Mai hospital held from September 25-27 in Hanoi. In his remarks at the event, Dr. Duong Huy Luong, the Department’s Deputy Director, said that despite gaining achievements, Vietnam's healthcare system is still facing significant challenges. Uneven distribution of personnel, and many advanced medical techniques are concentrated in major cities and central hospitals. To address these challenges, the MoH will continue carrying out a project to strengthen professional capacities and develop a network of satellite hospitals for 2025-2030, he said, adding that it had previously been executed during 2013-2020, yielding positive results. According to Professor Vu Van Giap, Deputy Director of Bach Mai hospital, the establishment has dispatched 2,138 professors and doctors to assist in directing health care at various facilities. This includes 1,700 medical specialists to provide support to nearly 200 hospitals in northern provinces. Up to 195,780 patients, including nearly 2,200 critical cases, have been treated, resulting in a 30% reduction in referral rates. He emphasised that Project 1816 and the “Satellite Hospital” project have been implemented effectively and sustainably at Bach Mai hospital over the years, enhancing the diagnostic and treatment capacities of local healthcare facilities. Under Project 1816, launched in 2017, experts and professional medical staff have been rotated from central-level to local-level hospitals, reducing the overcrowding at hospitals’ higher administrative units and improving the quality of medical service delivery in rural areas.

According to the Medical Examination and Treatment Management Department, the new satellite hospital project will transfer technology across a wider range of specialties, bridging the healthcare gap between different levels. Priority will be given to high-demand areas such as cardiology, surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics, infectious diseases, oncology, hematology, emergency care, respiratory, urology, neurology, and endocrinology, along with critical development areas like information technology and quality management. Under the project, a satellite hospital is defined as one that receives techniques transferred from national hospitals with high-tech medicine. National hospitals are those with the most developed healthcare nationwide, and are assigned the task of building and developing a network of satellite hospitals nationwide by specialty and field. The project introduces regional nuclear hospitals, which are those with specialties and fields developed in the region and responsible for coordinating with national nuclear hospitals to establish and develop a network of satellite hospitals in the region. In the first two years of implementing the project, the MoH will invest in developing regional nuclear hospitals and upgrade some satellite hospitals to regional nuclear ones. The expansion of satellite hospitals will correspond with the growth in the number of national nuclear hospitals./.