On September 24, the Northern Provinces Hospital Directors Club held a 2024 conference with the theme "Exchange on hospital management in the new era".
Speaking at the event, Mr. Hoang Cuong, Deputy Director of the Department of Planning and Finance (Ministry of Health) admitted: Through inspection and review, we found that there was a shortage of drugs and medical supplies in some hospitals due to the reason that in early 2024, hospitals applied the new Bidding Law, so the application was delayed. Some bidding packages had regulations that were not in accordance with the regulations on bidding packages, leading to bid cancellation. Basically, the work of ensuring drugs and supplies in medical examination and treatment is meeting the demand.
In the past, many legal documents on bidding have been issued. Up to now, the legal regulations and instructions for purchasing drugs and medical supplies have basically met the needs. However, when implementing, some problems may arise. But these problems are not the main reason why hospitals cannot purchase. The evidence is that many localities and hospitals have bid and have not encountered any problems. However, some other hospitals have encountered problems. In the recent past, the Ministry of Health has closely reviewed and promptly provided instructions and regulations so that bidding can meet the needs.
"Recently, the Government also assigned the Ministry of Health the task of continuing to review and propose amendments according to its authority to the content that is still stuck in the implementation process, or is not suitable to reality. In particular, the Prime Minister also assigned the ministry to take charge of developing a handbook on the process of purchasing drugs and medical equipment. Currently, we are implementing this task. In the near future, based on research and synthesizing the problems of hospitals, the handbook will be issued, in the spirit of hand-holding. Hospitals can refer to it to carry out bidding and procurement. Avoid shirking responsibility, evading responsibility, and pushing one's tasks to superiors" - Mr. Cuong said.
Associate Professor, Dr. Dao Xuan Co - Director of Bach Mai Hospital - said that the hospital ensures essential medicines, supplies, especially equipment. If before 2022, most patients coming to the hospital had to wait a whole week to get an X-ray, now patients can get an X-ray and a diagnosis within the day.
With the current legal documents, the immediate difficulties have been resolved. However, in reality, there are still problems such as price management. There needs to be a policy on drug and medical supplies prices. The current bidding and purchasing process has the risk of buying at high prices. Hospital leaders cannot know the real price of a device or a drug. When purchasing based on quotes from businesses or winning bids, there is still a risk that the price is not reasonable.
Hospitals are very worried, so price management needs to be strictly regulated so that hospitals can be confident in their purchases. In addition, hospital fees need to be calculated correctly and sufficiently to operate public hospitals effectively.
Mr. Hoang Cuong explained that regarding the package price, there are many ways to determine the price of materials to be purchased based on market prices, through the results of open bidding. All of these bidding results have been made public on the national bidding network. This is a price reference channel for medical facilities, reflecting quite closely the market. This is the basis for bidding prices.
Faced with the difficulties of medical facilities, Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan said that in the coming time, the Ministry of Health will continue to improve the legal framework for hospital management. At the same time, it will continue to resolve challenges, difficulties, and inadequacies related to the implementation of autonomy mechanisms, procurement and bidding...
