Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital shows the right way to build trust with partnered clinics

Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital is a tertiary hospital under the Directorate of Medical Services, Royal Thai Air

Force. One of the Ärst to join the universal health coverage scheme, it serves as many as 200,000 patients each year.

In order to take care of patients thoroughly, covering primary to critical care, and reduce congestion in the hospital, in 2006 the hospital collaborated with the National Health Security OfÄce (NHSO) to Änd 25 private clinics as partners.

However, partnering clinics and taking patients who need primary care from Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital did not directly translate into the patients’ trust. Meanwhile, Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital remains committed to supervising service standards and has come up with several projects to achieve this goal.

One of them is to build primary care networks with clinics in the area called primary care trust. Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital has worked closedly with the clinics not only in fund management but also capacity building to ensure quality of services by the clinics. Currently, over 150,000 of primary care visits can be provided at clinics instead of hospital. Therefore, patient satisfaction is increased because they can access the service near their home and do not have to wait in a long line in hospital, and they can still get services from hospital when needed. Furthermore, this can reduce hospital congestion. Air Vice Marshal Thaweepong Pajareya, Director of Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital, said the project has signiÄcantly reduced the number of primary care patients. Only 10%15% of chronic patients are sent back to the hospital. This helps Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital focus on more difÄcult tertiary cases. Another important project is “E-Referral

Healthcare System” whereby some of the referral processes are removed or made more convenient. In collaboration with the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital has developed a cloud-based database whereby partnered clinics and hospitals can share patients’ information in real time. Patients can save time and money and the treatment procedure runs more smoothly.

Air Vice Marshal Thaweepong explained that the system isn’t fully electronic yet due to some issues, such as staff experience and slow Internet connection. E-Referral Healthcare System now covers 92% of all information and going forward the hospital aims to up it to 95%.

In addition to having better connectivity between the hospital and primary care partnered clinics with both projects, Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital aims to enhance patients’ experience with

“Application for Patients”. With support from the Digital Government Development Agency (Public Organization), Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital launched an application called “BAH Connect” on 9 December 2019 that allows patients to make an appointment and browse their medical records.

“In the next phase, we wish to push patients to start taking better care of their health,” said Air Vice Marshal Thaweepong.

He concluded: “Every project aims to build an integrated service with a central focus on excellent primary care and further it with the E-Referral Healthcare System and application. Our goal is to ensure that patients receive high standard treatment so we can build the trust of the people we serve.”