Preparedness for hospital safety during COVID-19 pandemic: A survey of private hospitals in Vietnam

Objectives: Hospitals in private sectors also play an important role in the health system by providing crucial medical treatment to the population, especially during a pandemic crisis. Decision No. 3088/QD-BYT was issued by the Minister of Health (MOH) of Vietnam to promulgate the set of criteria for safe hospitals to prevent COVID-19 and other acute respiratory infections. This study was employed to describe the implementation of criteria for safety to prevent COVID-19 among private hospitals in Vietnam in 2020.

Methods: A cross-sectional study based on secondary data were extracted and analyzed from a recent survey of hospital safety conducted by MOH. Total of 178 private hospitals were selected in this study. The study received ethics approval from the Hanoi Medical University.

Results: The the proportion of private hospitals classified as “safe hospital” was 94.4%, “safe hospital with moderate level” was 3.9% and “unsafe hospital” was 1.7%. Thus, basically, most private hospitals in Vietnam have met the standards of safe hospitals according to Decision 3088/QD-BYT. In which, the criterion 8 “Hospital hygiene” had the highest level of compliance, followed by criterion 3 “General precautions” and 1“Establishment of steering committee and formulation of prevention plan”.

Conclusions: Most private hospitals in Vietnam had met the standards of safe hospitals according to Decision 3088/QD-BYT. Ministry of Health should improve the criteria in Decision 3088/QD-BYT to be more suitable with the emerging new situation and threat of the pandemic and develop mechanisms and regulations that require not only public hospitals also private hospitals to regularly report on disease preparation and response.

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