Health Insurance Reimbursement to Hospitals in Vietnam: Policy Implementation Results and Challenges

Abstract

In Vietnam, social health insurance (SHI) benefit package has been defined in a more explicit approach with the introduction of a regulation on the list of conditional reimbursed and non-reimbursed medical services. This paper aims to analyze the implementation results of this regulation from an economical perspective as well as the implementation challenges. Mix-method approach was employed. The quantitative component was employed to understand the implementation results. Desk study and qualitative components (2 inteviews with key informants from Ministry of Health; 6 discussions with key informants from provincial Social Security Offices and Departments of Health in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, Tuyen Quang, Thai Binh and Soc Trang provinces; the other 23 discussions and 31 interviews with key informants from 23 selected hospitals) was employed to summarize the implementation challenges. The regulation seems to not able to mitigate the reimbursement of high-technology and expensive services in higher-level providers. There is a sign of increasing out-of-pocket payments for those regulated services in higher-level providers. It has also posed greater influence on lower-level providers in terms of the proportion of reimbursement amount rather than to higher-level hospitals. Applying World Health Organization’s 6 building blocks of health system to analyze the implementation challenges, we provide policymakers evidence to improve the regulation, as well as point out the relating health system weakness need to be strengthened.