Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has instructed drastic measures tofacilitate the development of private healthcare services in an effortto reduce patient overload in hospitals.

“Allobstacles to expansion of private hospitals and clinics should beremoved,” the Prime Minister said at a recent meeting on theimplementation of the ‘Reducing patient overload in hospitals from2013-2015’ project.

The PM also encouragedapplying IT and advanced technology in medical examinations, hospitalmanagement, electronic medical records, and health insurancesettlements.

It is necessary to step up the application of self-governing mechanisms in state-owned hospitals, he added.

The PM underlined the need to improve healthcare at the grassrootslevel through establishing satellite hospitals and clinics at allprovinces and cities.

At the same time, he urgedrelevant agencies to accelerate the ranking of all hospitals bothState-run and private based on service quality, with the goal ofpublicizing the rankings of central-level hospitals in the first quarterof 2016.

According to a report by Minister ofPublic Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, over the past two years, anadditional three central-level hospitals have become operational, 172wards have undergone renovations and nearly 4,000 beds have been added.

The nation has opened 116 newhospitals, re-built 1,667 provincial and district-level wards, andoffered 15,535 new beds.

Theratio of beds per 10,000 population hit 28.1 in 2014, an increase from24.7 in 2012, but the ratio is still below that of other countries inthe region and the world.

The country currently has 1,182 hospitals, of which 168 are private facilities.-VNA