VietNamNet Bridge – The Ha Noi Social Insurance office has asked insurance agencies to strengthen their management of hospitals and other medical institutes to promptly detect violations related to health insurance.

Every three months health insurance expenses will be investigated and if discrepancies are discovered, insurance agencies must work directly with hospitals and other medical agencies to inspect the reasons why and report the case to the Ha Noi Social Insurance for a final decision.

The request was released after the Hoai Duc General Hospital in Ha Noi's Hoai Duc District was denounced for duplicating more than 1,000 blood test results for around 2,000 patients.

The test results were given to patients between July 2012 and May 2013, with each test result being used for between two and five patients.

The hospital received more than VND60 million (US$2,800) from social insurance agencies as payment for the duplicated blood test results, according to the municipal police.

Nguyen Duc Hoa, deputy director of the Ha Noi Social Insurance, told Kinh te do thi (Urban Economy) newspaper that while the economic losses resulting from the case were not much, the whole of society had lost some of their belief in the health sector as a result.

He warned that the case would affect the coverage offered by health insurance, which already faces a number of obstacles.

Health insurance inspectors are responsible for a great many tasks but the heavy workload, manpower is currently limited.

"If hospitals intentionally squeeze money out of the health insurance fund with sophisticated tricks, it is difficult for inspectors to find out," Hoa said.

Pham Luong Son, director of the Viet Nam Social Insurance's Health Insurance Policies Implementation Department, added that as health insurance inspections were conducted after patients left hospital and their insurance data was not encoded, it was not difficult for unscrupulous medical workers to intentionally make fake vouchers.

In the future, the Viet Nam Social Insurance office will assign 10 teams of inspectors instead of the previous three to check health insurance payments in provinces and cities across the country, Son confirmed.

Source: VNS