Nearly 3,300 leaders will 'lose their seats' due to medical center merger

At the provincial level, on average, a province has 6 centers, meaning 6 Directors and 18 Deputy Directors. When merging into 1 to organize according to the CDC model, there will only be 1 director, meaning there will be a "surplus" of 5 Directors and about 15 Deputy Directors.

On the morning of May 19, the Ministry of Health held a conference to solicit comments on draft documents on local health organization and personnel work.

Notably, the draft Circular on the organizational structure of the Provincial Center for Disease Control (CDC) is organized and arranged on the basis of merging centers and public service units with the same management function of preventive medicine at the local level, to ensure streamlining and efficiency.

This policy has been directed by the Ministry of Health to localities for more than a year now, according to Joint Circular No. 51/2015/TTLT-BYT-BNV.

Hanoi has reorganized 9 units in the city-level preventive medicine system (merged into 1) and kept the name of the Preventive Medicine Center.

According to the Ministry of Health, the merger of provincial units to organize according to the CDC model comes from the fact that in most provinces, there were previously many centers and public service units with the same function of managing preventive medicine.

On average, a province/city has about 6 units, some provinces even have up to 9 or 12 units such as: Preventive Medicine Center, Medical Quarantine Center, HIV-AIDS Prevention Center, Reproductive Health Center, Health Education and Communication Center, Testing Center, Social Disease Prevention Center, Family Doctor Clinic...

Dr. Pham Van Tac, Director of the Department of Organization and Personnel (Ministry of Health) said that as of April 30, the Ministry of Health had received 37 decisions from the Provincial People's Committees regulating the functions, tasks, powers and organizational structure of the Department of Health, including the organization of preventive medical units according to the CDC model.

For example, Hanoi has reorganized 9 units in the city-level preventive health system (merged into 1) and kept the name as Preventive Health Center. In addition, 17 other provinces/cities are continuing to implement.

However, there are still 9 provinces that are maintaining the existing center model. According to Mr. Pham Van Tac, the Ministry of Health will soon send an official document to all 9 provinces/cities, requesting that the merger must be completed before 2020 according to this policy.

Sharing more, Dr. Pham Van Tac said that at the provincial level, on average, a province has 6 centers, meaning 6 directors and 18 deputy directors. When merging into 1 to organize according to the CDC model, there will only be 1 director, meaning there will be a surplus of 5 directors and about 15 deputy directors.

“Thus, when merging units with the same preventive health function into one, on average each province will have about 20 surplus leaders. The whole country has 63 provinces/cities, so if all follow the CDC model, there will be about 1,260 surplus leaders, not to mention the department heads and deputy department heads, the number of rearranged officials is very large.”

Similarly, at the district level, there are about 500 districts that have not yet been reorganized into a multi-functional medical center model, which will be implemented in the near future. Currently, each district has an average of about 2 public service units (district general hospital and district medical center). If the organization is merged into 1, there will be a surplus of about 2,000 more leaders.

According to VNN