Vietnam's 113 Police Hotline Now Dispatches Medical Emergencies Under Circular 42, Effective Nov. 1

Vietnam's police hotline is now a medical dispatch line too. Ministry of Health Circular 42 took effect Nov. 1, 2026, and it changes who answers when someone dials 113 with a medical emergency.

Under the circular, every request for medical help made through 113 must go to medical staff stationed at provincial police command and information centres. Those staff assess the caller's needs, triage patients or accident victims by condition and urgency, and decide whether an ambulance is needed.

What the circular requires

When an ambulance is warranted, the medical staff issue the dispatch order. They are told to prioritise providers that can reach the scene fast and deliver the right level of care. They also coordinate with the ambulance team to pick a hospital, based on the patient's condition, hospital capacity and transport arrangements.

The key provision: those dispatch orders are binding on pre-hospital emergency providers. Orders can be verbal, written or sent by other legally recognised means. Once an order arrives, the provider must send appropriate medical teams, vehicles and resources.

The obligations run down the chain:

• Ambulance teams must reach the scene promptly, give first aid and emergency treatment within their authorised scope, choose a receiving hospital, notify it in advance and update the 113 hotline. If a patient's condition exceeds the team's capability, the team must call the hotline for more help.
• Hospitals must keep a dedicated emergency communication service running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If a hospital cannot take a patient as planned, it must tell the hotline promptly. Hospitals must also keep their available emergency resources updated for ambulance services and hotline staff.
• Providers must maintain qualified teams, vehicles, medicines, medical equipment and communication systems. Ambulances must carry tracking devices connected to the data systems of the provincial police command and information centres.

Hotline staff can mobilise additional emergency resources within their authority. Cases beyond that authority go to the relevant decision-makers.

Three lines, no coordination

Vietnam has long run three emergency numbers: 113 for police, 114 for fire and rescue, and 115 for ambulance and medical emergencies. Vietnamese media reports describe them as separate silos with no systematic cross-dispatch. A person who reported a road accident on 113 got police, with no automatic trigger for an ambulance.

The circular is the operating framework for Decision No. 1515/QĐ-TTg, which Vietnamese media report was signed Aug. 10 by Deputy Prime Minister Pham Thi Thanh Tra. That decision sets a goal that 100 percent of emergency calls get timely medical dispatch. It also lays out a 2026-2030 program to build what is described as Vietnam's first nationally coordinated pre-hospital emergency system.

Those reports also say police and health authorities will jointly run the call system. They attribute the choice of 113 to its higher public familiarity and larger call volume compared with the ambulance line.

The gap the circular does not fill

The ministry's own figures, as cited in Vietnamese media, show the scale of the problem. They indicate that roughly 81 percent of Vietnam's 100 million people have no access to pre-hospital emergency care. Another version of the figure says nearly four in five casualties lack it. The reports also put the national shortfall at about 1,000 ambulances.

Neither the dispatch rules nor the tracking requirement creates a single new vehicle or crew. Binding orders mean little where there is nothing to dispatch. In much of the country the first real test will be whether a provider exists within reach of the caller.

The design also puts a large operational burden on one point of failure. Everything now runs through medical staff inside police-run centres. How many of those staff each province will have, and how they will be trained and paid, is not laid out in the circular's published provisions.

There is a fair argument that fixing the routing comes first. A caller who reaches the wrong number today loses minutes in strokes, cardiac arrests and severe trauma, and a shared dispatch system with tracked vehicles and hospital capacity data is a precondition for any larger buildout. The tracking requirement also creates a data record of response times that did not exist when the lines operated separately.

Still, a target of 100 percent timely dispatch is only a number until vehicles, crews and hospital capacity exist to meet it. It is also unclear what role the 115 line plays now that medical dispatch runs through 113.

The next marker is the 2026-2030 program under Decision 1515. Whether it funds enough ambulances to close a gap reported at around 1,000 vehicles will decide whether Circular 42 changes outcomes or just changes who picks up the phone.