A seminar on Health Insurance and Hospital Financing has been conducted in December 2005
On December 19 - 23, 2005, SSO held a seminar on Health Insurance and Hospital Financing at Vansana Hotel Nam Ngum Resort, Vientiane province. 40 people participated in the seminar, representing SSO Board of Directors, SSO Medical Board, SSO Executives, SSO Technical Officers, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, and contracted hospitals of SSO.
The seminar, financially and technically supported by BTC Project, had the purpose to:
Compare results of costing study conducted in Mahosot hospital by SSO, MoH, MoLSW and hospital officers and with the results of other costing studies conducted in 4 contracted hospitals of SSO earlier that year.
Lessons could be drawn from the costing studies, which all demonstrated that the current level of capitation payment is more than sufficient to cover the respective costs of the hospital to treat SSO beneficiaries. Especially, the SSO medical board should be entrusted to request the inclusion of utilization rates in the capitation payment and propose new benefits to be covered by SSO, such as road traffic accidents.
Understand methods and trends of payment mechanism development of health insurance system; and quality of services development, which have been presented by Dr. Juergen Hohmann, BTC's chief technical advisor to SSO. He elaborated on the theoretical framework of quality management and gave examples of good practice in Belgium and Germany.
Get informed about training courses, which have been attended by SSO staff members on health economics, health systems research, and health statistic in neighboring countries in Vietnam and Thailand.
This seminar is one of various seminars, which have been organized by SSO from time to time. The costing studies in the contracted hospitals were important activities of SSO. Based on the results of costing studies as well as the seminars, the SSO could effectively discuss with the contracted hospitals on capitation amount. Currently, SSO is in the process of preparing contracts with hospitals with the aim to provide insured members a better quality of services in contracted hospitals and to increase their satisfaction.