Implementing the Plan to Provide Free Medical Check-ups for the Entire Population

On the afternoon of May 20, Mr. Nguyen Huy Ngoc—Vice Chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee—chaired a meeting to discuss and implement the Plan for Periodic Medical Check-ups and Free Screening for Citizens in the Province for the Year 2026. The meeting saw participation from leaders of various departments, sectors, and localities, alongside representatives from information technology enterprises currently providing management software for the local healthcare sector.

Provincial People’s Committee Vice Chairman Nguyen Huy Ngoc delivers his directive speech at the conference.

At the conference, delegates focused their discussions on the draft Plan, which aims to concretize the Resolution of the Politburo as well as directives from the Government and the Ministry of Health on breakthrough solutions to enhance public health.

Accordingly, the highest goal set by the Provincial People’s Committee is to strive for every citizen in the province to receive a periodic medical check-up or free screening at least once a year. This is viewed as a proactive step to detect, prevent, and treat diseases early, reducing the medical cost burden on citizens while step-by-step building a modern and sustainable health management system.

To ensure effective province-wide implementation, the Plan categorizes the population into 5 specific target groups: (1) The elderly, people with disabilities, poor or near-poor households, meritorious individuals, patients with chronic diseases, and ethnic minorities in disadvantaged areas; (2) Preschool children and general education students; (3) Employees working in state agencies and enterprises; (4) Officers and soldiers of the armed forces; and (5) The remaining population.

A major highlight of the 2026 plan is the strict requirement for 100% of check-up results to be integrated to establish Electronic Health Records on the national VNeID application. Data generated from both mobile health camps and fixed examinations at hospitals, district medical centers, and commune/ward health stations will be instantly updated into the Hospital Information System (HIS). This data will simultaneously sync with the Health Insurance Assessment Information System and the province’s centralized healthcare database. This digital infrastructure allows citizens to easily look up their personal medical histories, paving the way to completely replace paper documents during medical visits.

Delivering his directive speech, Vice Chairman Nguyen Huy Ngoc commended the Department of Health for its proactiveness in drafting the Plan to actualize breakthroughs in protecting, caring for, and enhancing public health in the spirit of the Politburo’s Resolution No. 72.

He underscored that this is a large-scale plan requiring the mobilization of the entire political system, closely involving all departments and sectors due to its immense social welfare impact. He requested the Department of Health to strictly absorb constructive feedback from members to finalize a highly methodical draft.

Regarding the phased implementation roadmap, the Vice Chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee demanded a clear division of stages. Specifically, the preparation phase will focus on reviewing and finalizing the comprehensive statistics of more than 4 million local residents, categorized by target groups and geographic areas, while clarifying the number of individuals already holding health insurance cards and those who have undergone their initial examinations to avoid data duplication.

The pilot phase will be launched first in 1 to 2 communes/wards, or applied within a 10-to-20-day window in a specific locality or industrial park to extract lessons learned. On that basis, the program will scale up province-wide, coupled with regular inspections, reviews, and evaluations, striving to fulfill all targets before December 31, 2026.

The panoramic view of the conference.

Regarding financial and management mechanisms, the Vice Chairman assigned the Department of Health to collaborate with the Department of Finance to formulate and submit cost norms in accordance with guidance from the Ministry of Health to establish a basis for budget allocation.

Particularly, the department must urgently review the actual information technology infrastructure across the entire healthcare system. Based on this, a synchronized network must be established to extract, input, and compile data into the province’s shared healthcare database for future sharing and utilization. Simultaneously, an inspection system must be set up to monitor data input quality, integrated with an automated warning system to promptly detect and handle duplication issues, such as a single individual taking multiple check-ups in a day or across different locations.

Vice Chairman Nguyen Huy Ngoc emphasized: "Implementing the Plan for periodic medical check-ups and free screenings for our population is a core political task that demands aggressive determination from the entire political system. The successful execution of this plan will create a profound shift in the awareness of the Ancestral Land’s citizens, forming a habit of proactive disease prevention, upgrading the quality of life, and fostering sustainable development."

Dinh Vu