According to the Department of Health of Soc Trang province, district medical centers in the province are currently facing difficulties due to unsatisfactory revenue and imbalance in revenue and expenditure.
The reason is that the number of patients visiting these units has decreased significantly. The Health Insurance route brings many benefits to patients, but it greatly affects the operation of hospitals, especially financially autonomous units that ensure regularity (financial autonomy group 2). Patients always tend to want to go to a facility with good technical facilities for treatment that Health Insurance still pays according to regulations, even though they can be treated at the district level.
The following District Health Centers were consolidated and merged from District Hospitals and Preventive Medicine Centers. When implementing the financial autonomy mechanism of group 2 (according to Decree No. 85 dated October 15, 2012 and Decree No. 16/2015 dated February 14, 2015 of the Government), the state budget did not guarantee funding to carry out regular expenditure activities for units assigned to provide preventive medicine services (including commune, ward and town health stations); improve health, population and food safety in the list of public career services using the state budget.
The units have to spend from their regular operating sources, leading to imbalances and insufficient funds for streamlining staff and severance pay for medical staff in public health service units that are self-sufficient in regular expenses. On the other hand, the current cost structure for medical examination and treatment is not complete, so autonomous units of group 2 also face difficulties.
The representative of the Soc Trang Provincial Department of Health said that the above difficulties need to be considered with support policies from the state budget to compensate for the shortfall in self-sufficient regular expenditure; support for streamlining the payroll, and severance pay for medical staff of public health service units that are self-sufficient in regular expenditure.
The Department of Health of Soc Trang province is preparing a report and advising the Provincial People's Committee to submit it to the Provincial People's Council for consideration and issuance of a Resolution to support operating costs for district-level medical centers, contributing to improving medical examination and treatment for people.
At the meeting with the Department of Health of Soc Trang province on November 13, Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Soc Trang province Nguyen Van Khoi shared the difficulties of the health sector in recent times. He requested the Department of Health to specifically assess the difficulties in revenue and expenditure of district health centers, thereby having a basis to advise the Provincial People's Committee to submit to the Provincial People's Council for timely solutions.
