Medical facilities must not allow shortages of drugs and medical equipment due to subjective reasons.
However, the City Department of Health still recorded some difficulties and problems in the bidding and procurement of drugs and medical equipment. Since mid-October, the unit has sent a report to the Department of Planning and Finance (Ministry of Health) on this issue.
The Department of Health pointed out difficulties and obstacles in drug procurement. In particular, regarding incentives for goods of Vietnamese origin, Article 5 of Decree No. 24/2024/ND-CP does not provide detailed instructions on the documents that contractors need to submit to enjoy incentives and the basis for verifying the accuracy of the documents.
Regarding the evaluation of the contractor's capacity and experience according to the content of the Evaluation Criteria Table on capacity and experience, there are still some inconsistent points. The bid price lookup system is not convenient for searching and synthesizing information, such as not being able to download the data file of contractor selection results, requiring login when looking up.
Regarding drug information mapping after the contractor selection results, some drugs have been granted circulation registration numbers by the Drug Administration, but have not been updated in the shared list on the Vietnam Social Security electronic portal. This leads to the fact that medical facilities have contractor selection results but cannot push the mapping data to the Vietnam Social Security electronic portal to use these drugs for patients covered by health insurance.
Regarding the procurement of medical equipment, the legal framework related to bidding and specialized laws have not yet fully defined the content and have not been updated in a timely manner with economic and social development. In particular, a list of national centralized procurement for medical equipment, supplies, and testing chemicals and a circular guiding the principles and criteria for dividing medical equipment groups according to technical and quality standards in bidding has not yet been issued.
