Hospitals in Viet Nam

Hospitals are a significant component of health service delivery. Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) is impossible without clearly identifying the role of hospitals and optimizing their performance. Nevertheless, countries continue to struggle to improve hospital planning and management. Facility-level challenges, such as weak management, long waiting periods, poor quality and safety, and low patient satisfaction impair hospital performance. At the level of the health system, challenges such as limited integration with primary health care, cost escalation, weak regulation and inadequate monitoring undermine hospitals’ contributions to population health outcomes.

Viet Nam's hospital system consists of a public-private mix, in which the public hospitals play substantial roles in providing health care services to the people. Overall, public hospitals are key drivers of efficiency and healthcare cost escalation.

Hospital autonomy reforms in Viet Nam were initiated in the 1990s, with a new policy allowing hospitals to charge user fees. It is well recognized that public hospitals in Viet Nam need to strengthen its finance and management and be effectively governed at the system level to drive improvement in quality and efficiency. In parallel, the government also plans to intensify its investment in grassroots health care system (district and commune level) to reduce overcrowding in central and tertiary hospitals and promote overall service integration across the system and care providers.