A Designated Health Institution is a hospital that has been granted permission to undertake some form of Medical /Dental training. Previously training in Zimbabwe was restricted to the 4 major Central Hospitals namely Parirenyatwa Group of Hospital, Harare Central Hospital , United Bulawayo Hospitals and Mpilo Hospital. Because of the desire to have all institutions involved in some form of training, Council has adopted the policy of decentralizing internship and specialist training.

The excessive numbers of interns at the traditional 4 training institutions has resulted in insufficient experience and supervision of the junior doctor. This therefore defeats the major objective of internship. To address this anomaly, Council has formulated a model /policy on the deployment of interns that will see interns being deployed to designated institutions such as Provincial Hospitals and Mission Hospitals.