Mandatory employee health checks in Vietnam

Are employee health checks mandatory in Vietnam?

Yes. A periodic employee health examination is a statutory duty, not a benefit an employer can choose to offer. Under the Law on Occupational Safety and Health, every employer must organise a health check for each employee at least once a year — and more often for people in hazardous jobs and for more vulnerable workers. The employer pays the whole cost, and a female employee is also given a gynaecological examination.1

The duty sits inside Vietnam's wider workplace-safety regime. The yearly check is the part that touches every employee in every office, but it travels with the hazard assessment, safety training and accident-reporting obligations covered on the occupational safety and health in Vietnam page; this page stays on the health check itself. It applies regardless of nationality: a foreign employee on a Vietnamese labour contract is owed the same periodic check as a local hire, which is separate from the one-off medical certificate used to apply for a work permit.

How often must employers provide a health check?

The minimum frequency depends on the work and the worker. The general rule is once a year; it doubles to twice a year (every six months) for heavy, hazardous or dangerous work and for workers the law treats as more vulnerable — minors, elderly employees and employees living with a disability. These are floors, not caps: an employer may examine staff more often.1

Two further moments trigger a check outside the yearly cycle. An employee must be examined before being assigned or moved to heavier or more hazardous work, and again before returning to work after an occupational accident or occupational disease. In each case the examination confirms the person is fit for the role rather than simply logging routine health.1

Who pays for the employee health check in Vietnam?

The employer. The cost of the periodic health check, any occupational-disease screening and the treatment of a diagnosed occupational disease is borne entirely by the employer — the employee contributes nothing. Vietnam also lets the employer treat that spending as a deductible business expense when working out corporate income tax, so the net cost is lower than the invoice suggests.1

This is a direct employment cost, separate from the compulsory insurance funds an employer already pays on top of salary. The health check is not paid out of health insurance; it is an additional expense the employer carries each year. For how the statutory on-costs stack up alongside it, see Vietnam payroll and employer costs, and for the paid leave and benefits those funds support, employee benefits in Vietnam.

What about women and workers exposed to hazards?

The annual check is not identical for everyone. A female employee must receive an obstetric and gynaecological examination as part of the check, at no cost to her. Separately, any employee who works around factors that can cause an occupational illness — dust, chemicals, noise, radiation and the like — is entitled to an occupational-disease detection examination on top of the general check.1

The examinations must be done at a licensed health facility that meets the professional and technical conditions set by the health authorities; an employer cannot self-certify the result. The women's gynaecological exam is one of several protections Vietnamese law builds around female staff — see female employee rights in Vietnam for the wider set, and sick leave in Vietnam for what happens when a check turns up a condition that stops someone working.1

What is the penalty for not providing health checks?

Skipping the mandatory check is an administrative violation with a per-employee fine and an overall cap. For a company, the fine is VND 2–6 million for each affected employee, up to a total of VND 150 million; for an individual employer the figures are half — VND 1–3 million per employee, capped at VND 75 million. On top of the fine, the employer is still made to run the examinations and to reimburse any employee who paid for their own check.2

A heavier fine applies to a narrower failing: not examining an employee before putting them on strictly regulated hazardous work, or before they return after an occupational accident or disease. We confirm the exact current amount under Decree 283/2026 before quoting a figure, because that sub-penalty's clause and band were not line-verifiable at the time of writing.2 The fines are modest next to the cost of a disputed occupational-illness claim or a workplace-accident investigation, which is the real reason the check is worth running on time rather than the penalty alone.

How is this different from the work-permit medical for foreign hires?

These two medicals are easy to confuse because both produce a "health certificate", but they do different jobs. The periodic health check is an ongoing occupational-health duty owed to every employee, local or foreign, year after year. The work-permit medical is a one-off: a health certificate issued within the last 12 months by an approved facility, submitted once as part of the work-permit dossier for a foreign hire.13

So a foreign employee needs both, at different points: the work-permit health certificate once, to get the permit, and then the periodic check every year like anyone else. For the full dossier, timeline and documents behind the permit itself, see Vietnam work permits. Pre-employment screening — identity, references, qualifications and the criminal-record certificate — is a separate vetting step, covered in lawful pre-hire screening in Vietnam.

Record-keeping and the annual report

The health check is not finished when the examination ends. The employer manages each employee's health record, and the results feed the annual occupational-health report filed with the local health authority. That report — covering the year's health checks and workplace-environment monitoring — is due before 10 January for the preceding year, on the form set by the health ministry's circular.4

A parallel annual occupational-safety-and-health report goes to the provincial labour authority and the Department of Health on the same 10 January deadline.5 Both sit on the yearly HR filing calendar alongside payroll and insurance deadlines — the Vietnam HR compliance calendar gathers them in one place so a January report is not missed.

How EOR Vietnam arranges periodic health checks for your staff

When EOR Vietnam is the legal employer of your Vietnamese team — the heart of our employer of record service in Vietnam — the periodic health check is one of the statutory duties we carry for you. We schedule each employee's yearly examination (six-monthly where the role or the worker calls for it) at a licensed facility, make sure female staff receive the gynaecological exam, keep the health records, and roll the results into the annual occupational-health report. You approve nothing line by line; it runs on the compliance calendar as a matter of course.

The examination is a direct employment cost, so it is passed through to you at cost — the employer bears it under the law, and it is a deductible business expense. It is not an add-on to our fee. Our service is a flat US$149 per employee per month for a Vietnamese national, the same whatever the salary, role or headcount, with no setup, onboarding, offboarding or payslip fees and no hidden fees; salary and statutory employment costs, the health check among them, are passed through at cost (as of October 2026). A foreign national who needs a Vietnamese work permit — and therefore the one-off work-permit medical as well as the yearly check — is quoted separately. For the full price and what it includes, see EOR Vietnam cost.

Related guides

The employee health check is one piece of compliant employment in Vietnam. Browse the full set of Vietnam employer guides, or start with these.