Responding to voters' petitions on bidding and purchasing of drugs and medical supplies

Voters of Nam Dan District Medical Center reported that previously, the procurement of drugs and medical supplies was organized by the Department of Health to centrally bid to supply to units. Currently, the units are assigned to organize the bidding themselves, while the district-level medical center is mainly composed of doctors and nurses who do not have expertise in bidding and procurement. If too much focus is placed on this, there will be no time to perform professional tasks. It is recommended that the Provincial People's Committee direct the organization of centralized bidding to ensure the supply of drugs and medical supplies to units.

Reply:

According to Circular 15/2020/TT-BYT, the Ministry of Health only regulates the list of drugs for centralized bidding at the local level, including 129 active ingredients specified in Appendix III, Circular 15/2020/TT-BYT, without regulations on the list of centralized bidding for chemicals and medical supplies.

Before 2020, the bidding for drugs, chemicals, and medical supplies was assigned by the Provincial People's Committee to the Department of Health as the centralized procurement unit. However, centralized bidding at the Department of Health encountered some shortcomings and difficulties such as: The volume of State management work is increasing, while the Department of Health's human resources are very thin, if all items are centrally bid at the Department of Health, there will be no more human resources to implement other contents, especially the work of guiding and inspecting the implementation of pharmaceutical work at medical examination and treatment facilities, which can lead to many errors in the unit that are not promptly detected and corrected.

The laboratory of Nam Dan District Medical Center is invested with modern equipment to serve medical examination and treatment. Photo: Thanh Le

Each medical examination and treatment unit has its own needs for drugs, chemicals, and medical supplies. Therefore, when bidding centrally, the bidding list is too large, which will take a lot of time in the process of synthesizing, planning, and evaluating results, affecting the progress of supplying goods to medical examination and treatment units. Bidding at medical examination and treatment units will overcome the above shortcomings.

In the coming time, the Provincial People's Committee directs the Department of Health to continue to guide units to proactively plan and organize bidding for the purchase of items not on the list of centralized procurement; items on the list of centralized procurement but have not yet had results or have used up all the winning bids; Develop a sample procurement bidding process for units to base on; Regularly contact medical facilities to promptly grasp information related to difficulties and problems in drug supply and propose solutions; Inspect and supervise the planning and organization of drug procurement bidding of medical units, promptly correct units that have not done a good job of planning and organizing drug supply, leading to drug shortages at medical facilities.