On December 30, the People's Council (HPC) of An Giang province continued the 2nd working day of the 7th session (regular session at the end of 2025). At the session, delegate Thai Thi Duy Ngan raised the issue that, according to voters and people's reflections, in the past year, at times and places, medical facilities still lacked medicine to treat patients with health insurance cards, while private medical facilities that are examined for health insurance are not short of medicine.
On the other hand, when health insurance drugs run out, doctors prescribe for patients to buy outside, and when treatment is completed, patients are reimbursed to the Social Insurance (BHXH) agency, but when paying, many procedures cause trouble, leading to people abandoning the benefit regime and not paying.
Providing information on the above issue, Director of An Giang Department of Health Tran Quang Hien said that there are many reasons for the shortage of medicine at medical facilities. In which, the ability to forecast medicines of medical examination and treatment facilities in some facilities does not have provisions for unexpected cases of disease increase, rare cases of disease at the facility. Therefore, when there are cases of disease increase compared to normal times, the facilities are locally short of medicine.
Some medical examination and treatment facilities, due to lack of funds during operation, are slow to pay the provider, leading to the supply being interrupted at times.
The way to solve these 2 causes is different between private and public facilities. Private facilities have stability in the number of patients and operating costs, so the health insurance drug shortage situation can be solved flexibly.
Regarding the reflection that the procedures for paying for drugs when having to buy them outside according to Decree 188/2025/ND-CP are still cumbersome, causing trouble for people, the health sector requests to record and coordinate with social insurance to find ways to overcome it. Because this issue is newly implemented, the regulations on procedures still have confusing contents for people and even some medical staff do not know about administrative procedures.
Mr. Hien said that to thoroughly overcome the above situation, the Department of Health has been and is urgently issuing synchronous solutions. Regarding supply management, the Department of Health directs medical facilities to maximize the use of legal corridors to proactively implement additional procurement packages. Strengthen hospital management, and handle arising situations well.
Currently, the stage of arranging and organizing public service units in the health sector is an opportunity to further strengthen organization and management, minimizing risks arising that cause trouble for patients and their loved ones.
Regarding administrative procedure reform, the Department of Health requires hospitals to establish support procedures at departments or have professional guidance departments to guide, collect and certify necessary documents for people immediately when prescriptions are identified as missing.
The health sector will strengthen inter-sectoral coordination with the provincial Social Insurance to unify the list and simplify the confirmation forms. “We are researching a solution to interconnect electronic prescription data so that when the hospital reports that drugs are out of stock on the system, the Social Insurance agency can compare and make payments to people in the fastest way through the digital environment, minimizing the use of manual papers,” Mr. Hien emphasized.
