Hanoi (VNA) - Incomplete data is among the issues hindering theapplication of information technology in health insurance, according to areport by the Ministry of Health’s Health Insurance Department.

As part of a health insurance medical information system rolledout last June and described as the optimal solution to ensure transparency andprevent insurance fraud, the transmission of electronic data in healthinsurance management and payment is facing challenges due to continuous changesin local health service facilities, said the report.

These were changes to technical and medical equipment, medicineand other health related items.

Others issues, according to the report, relate to the difficultiesin hiring IT service companies to help health insurance agencies follow theGovernment’s rules on using information systems in health insurance.

In particular, some documents issued by Vietnam Health Insuranceare not synchronised with the Ministry of Health’s instructions on the hiringof IT companies to install medical infomation systems for health insurancemanagement and payment

The problems were found mostly at health insurance authorities atgrass-root levels where many staff lack qualifications to record data aboutpatients’ tests and treatments and therefore information transmitted to socialinsurance agencies for payment is often not sufficiently clear, said thereport.

A lack of both quantity and quality of IT facilities such ascomputers and network servers at local health insurance agencies is alsohindering the application of IT in their management works.

A majority of hospitals and clinics have not installed informationmedical systems with a capacity to import the required data, which oftenincludes many figures.

Moreover, most health care workers have not been trained in IT andfind it hard to adapt to the medical information system.

Deputy Minister of Health Le Tuan, told the Vietnam Economic Timesrecently that although this year was promoted as the threshold year forimplementing the National Assembly’s resolution on boosting the linkage ofhealth care data between healthcare systems and health insurance and socialinsurance, the connection is still very limited due to problems in sending andreceiving data.

According to another report deliveredby Pham Luong Son, Deputy Director General of the Vietnam Social Securityat a conference held in January, 99.5 percent of medical facilities nationwidehave been linked to the health insurance medical information assessmentsystem since its launch, except for 65 commune-level health stations inremote areas without electricity access.

The health insurance medical informationassessment system received some 68.9 million dossiers requesting insurancepayments worth 35 trillion VND (1.55 billion USD) in the last six months of2016, and another 3 million requesting insurance payments of 2 trillion VND (88.6million USD) in the first month of 2017, the report said.-VNA