On the afternoon of November 11, continuing the 8th Session, the Minister of Health answered questions from National Assembly deputies.
Delegate Nguyen Thi Thuy (Bac Kan delegation) raised the issue that, according to the feedback from hospital pharmacies, there are still difficulties in bidding for drugs.
In fact, there are still times when people finish seeing a doctor but cannot buy medicine at the hospital pharmacy, affecting treatment.
Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan said: “The pharmacy is managed by the hospital and organizes retail purchases to sell to people when needed, without taking money from the budget, not from health insurance. Previously, the hospital decided on this purchase, however, the 2023 Bidding Law stipulates that hospital pharmacies must also organize bidding.”
However, the organization of bidding for hospital pharmacies faces many difficulties. Medical facilities have reflected this content during the process of drafting the revised Law on Pharmacy.
According to the Minister, taking into account the opinions of the facilities, the current revised Pharmacy Law (passed at the end of the 8th Session) has resolved the issue related to hospital pharmacies, will hand over the initiative in the procurement of hospital pharmacies to medical facilities and ensure publicity and transparency. On that basis, it will provide more sources of medicine to serve the people.
Debate on this issue, delegate To Van Tam (Kon Tum delegation) said that in the past, there were legal bottlenecks. Recently, the Government and the National Assembly have made many efforts to remove them. For example, there are the 2023 Bidding Law, the 2023 Medical Examination and Treatment Law, Decree 96 of 2024 and Decree 24 of 2023 to detail these laws.
According to the delegate, the legal mechanisms and bottlenecks have been basically resolved, but the shortage of drugs still exists. So is there a case of lack of responsibility on the part of those responsible for the bidding of these medical facilities? If so, how has the Minister of Health handled this issue?
The Minister of Health said that there will be three levels of bidding for drug purchases. The first level is centralized procurement at the Ministry of Health, the second level is procurement at the provincial level and assigned to the locality to implement, and the third level is medical facilities.
During the implementation process, the Bidding Law took effect from January 1, 2024, which is also the first year of implementing the new regulations. The Ministry of Health has worked with localities, regularly issued documents and held online conferences to guide the implementation of bidding activities in 63 provinces and cities.
The Ministry of Health has found that due to the new regulations, it is difficult to research, understand, and arrange human resources for implementation. Some human resources are still confused when reading these documents, so the implementation process is still difficult.
To solve this problem, in addition to training for all localities, the Ministry of Health is developing a handbook on drug bidding, which will provide very specific step-by-step instructions so that localities have the capacity to implement it.
According to the Minister, in reality, there are units and cadres who do not dare to think or act, so there are still problems in the implementation process.
