Thirty-two in HCM City carried out their own bids for the first time last year, helping reduce shortages of medicine (Photo: tuoitre.vn)HCM City (VNA) – Thirty-two
public hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City carried out their own bids for the first
time last year, helping reduce shortages of medicine.
The remaining 27
hospitals in the city cannot carry out their own bids because they do not have
a council of experts.
These hospitals will fix
prices based on the 32 hospitals’ bidding results and then sign contracts with
pharmaceutical companies.
At a press meeting last
week, Pham Khanh Phong Lan, the Health Department’s deputy head, said that
although concentrated bidding carried out by the department had helped save
costs, there was no need for it because there was a large market
of and hospitals in the city.
In concentrated bidding,
only some companies win a contract, Lan said, adding that, in this case, the
companies have problems in providing medicine.
The hospitals that carry
out their own bids have more choices of medicine, she said.
To limit the difference
between the price of medicine paid by the hospitals’ bidding councils, the city
People’s Committee allows only a 5 per cent difference.
The results of the first
bidding are expected in the first quarter.
Do Van Dung, head of the
department’s medicine management division, said at least 163 bidding packages,
at a cost of nearly 9.5 trillion VND (416.7 million USD), were finalised this
year. This represented an increase of nearly 400 billion VND compared to last
year.
While waiting for the
bidding results, hospitals are allowed to extend contracts with companies which
had earlier won contracts in the concentrated bidding last year.
The Health Department
has asked for a list of at hospitals to ensure proper treatment
guidelines and financing, giving priority to Vietnamese-made medicine.
In the city, the
proportion of Vietnamese-manufactured medicine at hospitals is 48 percent on
average. Grassroots-level health facilities have a higher proportion of 60 percent.-VNA
Source: VietnamPlus
