Solving the problem of overload and redistribution of medical space
Speaking at the conference, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Anh Dung - Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health said that the formation and development of facility 2 of specialized hospitals is a key content in the strategy to develop the city's health system in the new phase, in order to bring high-quality health services closer to the people.
According to Mr. Dung, Ho Chi Minh City is a super-urban with high population density, large area, and increasing demand for healthcare both in terms of quantity and professional depth. Meanwhile, central-level hospitals are still under prolonged overload pressure, and in many areas outside the center, some medical facilities have been invested in infrastructure, land and equipment but have not been effectively exploited.
This paradox requires the city to restructure the medical space, instead of continuing to focus resources and patients on the core area," Mr. Dung emphasized.
In that context, the facility 2 model is identified as a suitable and sustainable solution. This is not simply expanding facilities, but is a way to optimize existing resources, shorten the time to deploy specialized services and improve access to healthcare for people. Facilities 2 are organized as "extended arms" of specialized hospitals, operating according to the same professional standards, technical processes and management systems, ensuring quality equivalent to the main facility.
Over the past time, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health has implemented the grassroots level 2 model in many flexible forms: linking specialized hospitals with general hospitals to form complete medical examination and treatment facilities in areas far from the center; merging to unify management focal points; or "transplanting" key specialty clusters into general hospitals with modern infrastructure.
To make these models operate effectively, the leaders of the Department of Health emphasized 5 core principles: choosing the right establishment and the right needs; standardizing professional quality; flexible but synchronous personnel organization; promoting digitization and data intercommunication; and measuring efficiency with specific indicators.
The goal is not to open many facilities 2, but to organize correctly and operate effectively, so that people can access high-quality healthcare right near their place of residence," Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Anh Dung affirmed.
Primary healthcare, the "gatekeeper" of the urban healthcare system
In parallel with the development of specialized centers, Dr. Nguyen Van Vinh Chau - Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health - emphasized the key role of grassroots healthcare, especially ward and commune health stations, in the multi-layer - multi-polar - multi-center healthcare system model.
According to Mr. Chau, in a residential community, health conditions can be divided into four groups: healthy people; healthy people but with risk factors; people who have had the disease but have not been detected; and people who have had the disease and are being managed and treated. For non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, the rate of people with the disease but not diagnosed is still high. In Ho Chi Minh City alone, the results of health check-ups for the elderly show that about 10-15% of people with hypertension have not been detected and treated.
From that reality, Dr. Nguyen Van Vinh Chau believes that disease prevention and early detection need to be placed on par with treatment. In which, primary health care is the overarching foundation, covering from prevention, early screening, chronic disease management to rehabilitation.
However, currently the role of grassroots healthcare has not been properly promoted. Data from 2025 shows that only about 8% of examinations take place at the primary level, while nearly half of patients go directly to specialized hospitals. Medical personnel at the grassroots level also account for only about 17% of the total industry workforce, creating a vicious cycle between lack of human resources and lack of patients.
To remove this bottleneck, the Ho Chi Minh City health sector is synchronously implementing many solutions: developing health stations according to the principle of family medicine; strengthening remote consultation; training non-communicable disease management for lower-level doctors; ensuring drug supply equivalent to the upper-level level and having policies to attract doctors to work at the grassroots level.
In particular, Resolution 72 of the Politburo clearly defined the direction of strongly shifting from "treating diseases" to "proactively preventing diseases", taking grassroots healthcare as the foundation. "The goal is for health stations to truly become gatekeepers of the health system, taking care of people's health from early, remote and throughout life," Dr. Nguyen Van Vinh Chau emphasized.
