Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long made the statement when he presented a draft of the revised law at the third plenary session of the 15th-tenure National Assembly on the afternoon of May 25 in Ha Noi.

Minister Long said the revision of the law is necessary to solve practical problems in terms of legal mechanisms that the current law fails to provide.

 Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long presents the draft law on the afternoon of May 25 in Ha Noi.

The draft law consists of 12 chapters and 106 articles, focusing on improving practical skills, tightening management of practitioners, improving the quality of medical examination and treatment, reforming administrative procedures in medical examination and treatment, and enhancing the development of traditional medicine, while combining traditional medicine with modern medicine.

The draft law clearly states that the capacity must be checked and assessed before the practicing license is granted for doctors; doctors of the People's armed forces; nurses; midwives; biomedical engineers; nutritionists and paramedics.

In the meantime, the practicing license for people, who are herbalists, people with traditional remedies, and people with traditional methods of treating diseases will be issued after considering their records.

The draft law also regulates that the practicing license will be valid for five years and updating medical knowledge is one of the conditions for renewing the practicing license.

Besides, foreigners who provide medical examination and treatment to Vietnamese people must speak Vietnamese fluently during medical examination and treatment, except for a few cases of cooperation in exchange of expertise and technical transfer.

The draft law supplements that medical facilities have to obey a set of standards to assess the quality of service issued by the health ministry. It also encourages medical facilities to obey international standards of service quality.

Medical facilities have to apply information technology in order to gradually share medical examination and treatment results of patients for other medical facilities, creating favourable conditions for patients when they go to other medical facilities for examination and treatment.

The draft law said that it will maintain the system of medical examination and treatment establishments in both the public and the private sector as before. However, there is a change in professional decentralisation according to Resolution No 20-NQ/TW. Accordingly, the system will be divided into three levels: initial level, basic level and specialised level of examination and treatment.

In terms of price, the draft law said that the health ministry will regulate the price for medical examination and treatment services of public medical facilities nationwide.

Regarding administrative reform, the draft said that the National Medical Council is assigned to assess the capacity of practitioners and issue practicing licenses for them.

The health ministry, the Ministry of National Defence and the Ministry of Public Security will issue the operating permit for medical facilities under their management while Departments of Health in localities will issue the operating permit for other medical facilities, including private medical facilities.

The Ministry of Health will regulate the price for medical examination and treatment services of public medical facilities nationwide.

The National Assembly adopted the 2009 Law on Medical Examination and Treatment on November 23, 2009. After the Law was promulgated, the Government and the health ministry issued documents guiding the implementation of the law, creating an important legal corridor for State management in the field of medical examination and treatment, contributing to standardising the quality of medical examination and treatment and increase people's access to medical examination and treatment services.

Currently, the country has about 52,000 medical facilities, both public and private, providing advanced medical techniques, contributing to increasing the average life expectancy of people to 73.7 years./.