Primary health care system to follow US model from January 2016

Mr. Pham Van Tac, Director of the Department of Organization and Personnel (Ministry of Health) said that in the near future, the Ministry of Health will merge preventive medicine centers, HIV/AIDS prevention centers, social disease prevention centers, etc. into a unified unit.

Staff of the Provincial Center for Preventive Medicine vaccinate children against Japanese encephalitis (Photo: Dinh Nguyet).

On December 30, at the conference on reforming the local health system, Mr. Tac said that administrative reform at the provincial level will be implemented from January 2016 following the US CDC model (disease control) in the spirit of Circular No. 51/2015/TTLT-BYT-BNV.

According to information from the Ministry of Health, currently in many localities there are an average of 5-7 centers, with some localities having up to 12 centers.

Also according to Circular 51, the department level will control the leadership team to no more than 3 deputies; at the general department level, the leadership team will have no more than 4 deputies.

Thus, the merger of these centers will help to reduce a lot of human resources. Typically, the team of directors of the centers will be reduced from 5-12 people to only 1 director. Thus, nationwide, there will be a reduction of hundreds of public vehicles serving the directors; a reduction in the construction of hundreds of new public headquarters...

According to Mr. Tac, with the new regulations, leadership title standards require leaders to have a postgraduate degree and an additional mandatory regulation is a certificate of training in health sector management.

"Because for a long time, managers in the industry often have degrees in expertise and majors related to treatment and prevention, while management requires skills and expertise in human resources and finance management," Mr. Tac emphasized.

According to the new regulations, regarding the standards of professional qualifications, due to the nature of the health sector as a highly technical professional sector, the Director of the Department of Health must have a postgraduate professional qualification in medicine, pharmacy, public health, or health management.

For Deputy Director of the Department of Health, he/she must have a postgraduate degree in one of the following majors: medicine, pharmacy or other majors suitable for the assigned field of work.

Regarding the standards for ranks, the Director and Deputy Director of the Department of Health are required to hold the rank of senior specialist or equivalent or higher.

Also in the coming time, at the commune and ward level, a dual-function center will be established based on the merger of the preventive medicine center, the medical center and the district hospital. This ensures unified management in prevention and treatment for people to achieve the best results right at the grassroots level, with concentrated investment resources.

The Ministry of Health's report shows that in recent times, some localities have neglected investment in preventive medicine, causing the disease to spread, focusing only on treatment facilities because these are the facilities with revenue sources./.

According to Vietnamplus