HCMC health department eyes private investment in public hospitals

The policies should allow private investors to build a second campus for existing public hospitals while the city could staff them, it said.

This would also ease the huge load on public hospitals, create more revenues for them and help retain medical workers, it said.

It recommended the transfer of public lands to private investors for building new hospitals with 300-500 beds.

Besides, public hospitals should be allowed to hire foreign doctors and nurses using private resources, it added.

Since mid-2021 until early November last year, around 1,300 medical workers in HCMC had quit their job, with many saying they were overworked and underpaid.

Many public hospitals have become rundown and are overloaded, especially leading ones like Cho Ray and the HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases, due to a lack of funding.

HCMC has 128 hospitals, exactly half of them private, and 42 beds per 10,000 people.