Minister of Health Đào Hồng Lan responds to NA deputies' comments at the NA’s sixth plenary session on Monday morning in Hà Nội.—VNA/VNS Photo Phương Hoa

HÀ NỘI — The domestic health sector is advised to enhance the capability of managerial officers in bidding processes at medical facilities.

There was a need to focus on training medical facilities’ managerial staff in bidding, bidding management, and project management, as in the past, the Ministry of Health implemented centralised bidding.

Now, in addition to centralised bidding, medical facilities have been tasked with being proactive in bidding for drugs.

However, when these facilities were assigned the responsibility of bidding for drugs, they lacked competent human resources, stated National Assembly (NA) deputy Nguyễn Công Hoàng of Thái Nguyên Province, during the NA’s sixth plenary session. This session discussed the outcomes of monitoring the resolution of voters' petitions sent to the 15th NA's fifth session, on Monday morning in Hà Nội.

He also mentioned that the health sector needed to publicise the list of medical techniques that district-level medical facilities are capable of performing. This would enable patients, who are covered by health insurance, to remain at the district-level medical facilities for treatment of common diseases.

For the medical techniques that the district-level medical facilities could not perform, the patients would be allowed to go to higher level medical facilities for treatment, he said.

It aimed to reduce problems for patients who participated in health insurance, when they wanted to move to higher-level medical facilities for treatment, he said.

He asked the NA and the Government to pay more attention to the current insurance premium levels to ensure the appropriateness and balance of the insurance fund.

Also at the session, NA deputy Nguyễn Anh Trí of Hà Nội said the health ministry had already responded to recommendations from local voters on a number of issues, such as adding drugs to the list covered by the health insurance fund, overcoming the shortage of drugs, medical equipment and supplies in hospitals, improving salaries and allowances for medical staff.

He highly appreciated the efforts of the health ministry and the Minister of Health in solving difficult issues.

In an attempt to solve the local shortages of drugs and medical supplies at medical facilities in some provinces and cities, the health ministry issued legal documents to promote the procurement of medical equipment to serve medical examination and treatment.

Therefore, he requested provinces and localities to inspect and organise the procurement of adequate equipment to ensure good conditions for examination and treatment.

He said some voters complained that health insurance participants had to ask for a hospital transfer certificate when they wanted to move to another medical facility. The voters said it was very troublesome and very time-consuming.

As per regulations, the health insurance participants have to be examined and treated at the medical facility that they registered at on the health insurance card first. During the treatment at the registered medical facility, if they want to move to another facility, they have to ask for a hospital transfer certificate.

He said information technology had now advanced and the connection of medical test results among medical facilities was quite smooth.

"Currently, more than 93 per cent of the Vietnamese population has health insurance cards, so the requirement of a hospital transfer certificate should be abolished," he said.

He also suggested further promoting the connection among medical facilities at all levels.

The next amendment of the Law on Health Insurance should be changed so that health insurance participants can receive examination and treatment wherever they want in accordance with the law and their condition.

“This must be considered the most important amendment,” he said.

Speaking at the session, Minister of Health Đào Hồng Lan thanked NA deputies for their opinions as well as the recommendations of voters nationwide.

She said resolving voters' opinions and recommendations was one of the key works considered and implemented by the ministry.

Lan said that ensuring drugs and medical supplies after the COVID-19 pandemic showed limitations due to both internal and external causes.

Currently, the problems in supply and policy mechanisms have been resolved thanks to the support of the NA and Government. However, the capability of managerial officers in bidding work was still inadequate, she said.

She requested the People's Committees of the provinces to review and fix the situation.

Extra classes should be allowed

Minister of Education and Training Nguyễn Kim Sơn responds to NA deputies' comments at the NA’s sixth plenary session on Monday morning in Hà Nội.—VNA/VNS Photo Phương Hoa

NA deputy Nguyễn Văn Huy of Thái Bình Province said looking at the lives of the majority of teachers today, tutoring was a solution to improve their income.

“If doctors can open private clinics after working hours and many people in other professions can work after working hours to increase their income, tutoring is a legitimate right for teachers,” he said.

He said that the balance of supply and demand in education was an opportunity for teachers to earn extra income.

Private tutoring, if it stems from the legitimate wishes of the learners, was not worthy of condemnation, he said.

The issue that voters and the people were concerned about was how to regulate and organise the implementation of private tutoring in a healthy and correct way so that teachers could have the opportunity to improve their income and students could access prestigious quality education, he said.

He proposed the Ministry of Education and Training quickly amend relevant regulations to ensure the interests of students, parents and teachers. The ministry should submit to the competent authority to decide on adding extra teaching and learning to the list of conditional business occupations.

Responding to Huy’s comments, Minister of Education and Training Nguyễn Kim Sơn said that extra learning was a real need of learners, and the need was very diverse.

The ministry had issued many regulations on extra teaching and learning in the school environment, especially Circular 17 on controlling extra teaching and learning.

However, he also admitted that it lacked a legal basis to manage, monitor, and handle extra teaching and learning outside of school.

He agreed with Huy that it needed to include tutoring and extra learning in conditional business occupations to have a legal basis for handling related issues outside of school.

He said in the process of amending the Law on Investment in 2020, the education ministry had sent document No 1534 to the National Assembly's Economic Committee and the Ministry of Planning and Investment, and sent document No 2026 to the Prime Minister, requesting to supplement extra teaching and learning to the list of conditional business occupations.

However, the submission had not been approved, he said.

He said the country now had about 53,000 schools. Thus, he asked localities to coordinate to manage the extra learning and teaching out of school.— VNS