A good workplace is the foundation of care quality

On 3 November 2026, Fortune and Great Place To Work published the 2026 list of the 100 best workplaces in Southeast Asia. Vinmec Healthcare System, including Vinmec Da Nang, ranked No. 9. It is Vinmec's second consecutive year in the Top 10, and Vinmec is the only Vietnamese hospital in this group. The results are based on a confidential survey of more than 1.3 million employees in ten countries.

The word I noticed most was "confidential". This is not the verdict of an expert panel, nor a dossier written by the hospital about itself. It is the direct voice of doctors, nurses, technicians and support staff, the people who know best how each shift really goes.

Why does a workplace ranking matter for quality?

In hospital management we usually measure quality through clinical indicators: infection rates, adverse events, waiting times, patient satisfaction. But behind every indicator are people. An exhausted nurse is more likely to miss something. A doctor who is not listened to will hesitate to report an incident. A team without trust will not dare to say "stop" when it sees a risk.

Health-system research, notably work on staff engagement in the English NHS, has repeatedly shown a link between staff engagement and both clinical outcomes and patient experience. In other words, workplace culture is not "soft" stuff that sits outside quality. It is part of the infrastructure of patient safety.

Three lessons from a governance perspective

First, psychological safety is a precondition for patient safety. A safe hospital is not one without errors, but one where errors are raised early, analysed honestly and fixed at the root. That only happens when staff trust that speaking up will protect them rather than get them punished. A just, non-punitive reporting culture, candid handover meetings, and leaders who actively ask "what could we do better" are small things that make the difference.

Second, staff experience and patient experience are two sides of the same coin. Patients sense the atmosphere of a ward: how colleagues work together, the patience in an explanation, the care taken over details nobody asked for. These things cannot all be written into procedures. They come from people who feel their work is meaningful and respected.

Third, measure people as seriously as we measure clinical care. If we review quality dashboards every month, we should also track the human indicators regularly: engagement, turnover, workload and burnout. An external ranking is a useful mirror, but the real management tool is internal data, monitored continuously and acted on promptly.

An award is a checkpoint, not a destination

For Vinmec Da Nang, this result is a shared source of pride, and above all a recognition of the teams who care for patients day and night. But I see it as a checkpoint rather than a destination. Pressure on healthcare is not easing: demand is rising, patient expectations are growing, and technology and artificial intelligence are changing the way we work. Keeping a good workplace in that context is much harder than achieving it once.

The question I want to put to myself, and to everyone who leads in healthcare, is this: does each management decision we make today help our staff work better, or simply make them work more? If the answer is "better", quality of care and patient satisfaction will follow as a natural consequence.

An excellent hospital is measured not only by modern equipment or international accreditation, but by whether the people who work there want to stay, and are proud to recommend it to their own families. I believe that is also the most durable measure of quality.