Mission Report: Revising Basic Health Benefit Package for Social Health Insurance 14-16 June 2016

With the aim to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC), Vietnam enacted the Health Insurance law in 2008, providing coverage for health intervention items in the scope of health benefits under the Social Health insurance (SHI), managed by Vietnam Social Security (VSS). The scope of health benefits was generous with more than 20,000 items covered as of 2015. The concept of Basic Health Service Package (BHSP) was introduced when the Health Insurance Law was revised in 2014 with the aim to help prioritize and rationalize the use of health interventions in the benefits package. The BHSP will be overlooked by the Council for BHSP who is responsible for the development of the package. In order to generate evidence to inform the development of the BSHP, Health Strategy and Policy Institute (HSPI), Vietnam, appointed by Vietnamese Ministry of Health (MOH), collaborates with Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP), Thailand. HITAP is responsible for providing technical support and supervisions to Vietnamese scholars, which comprises researchers from HSPI and Hanoi School of Public Health (HSPH) who work full-time in generating health technology assessment (HTA) evidence.

In order to achieve the goal, HSPI has hosted two visits for HITAP in Hanoi, Vietnam, on March 7-18 and April 18-20 2016. The aims of the first visit was to develop the scope and framework of the work to be presented for local stakeholders for their opinions and to agree on the protocol of the work and the manner of collaboration among Vietnamese scholars and HITAP. The Vietnamese counterpart then led the work with support from HITAP staff. Furthermore, the second visit was held as a follow-up to discuss the progress of the work, obstacles and solutions. After the second visit, the Vietnamese scholars then continue working with regular updates to HITAP staff. Some of the preliminary results were made available with distant communication and support from HITAP staff. The results will be presented to stakeholders for their comments and feedbacks.

As a result, the third visit was hosted by HSPI on June 14th-15th 2016 at HSPI, Hanoi, Vietnam to finalise the preliminary result and presentations as a preparation for the stakeholder consultation meeting which was held on June 16th 2016 at Hanoi Hotel, Hanoi, Vietnam.

On the other hand, information on the development of Thai benefits package was requested from
HITAP by the researchers from Research for Development (R4D), who are commissioned by the United State Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide consultation on designing
BHSP in Vietnam. The R4D consultation workshop will also happen on 16th June 2016. HITAP agreed to share with the R4D team Thai experience as an input for their work and to participate in the R4D workshop.