Covid-19 funding pulls small public hospitals out of financial crisis
The ongoing Covid-19 crisis has helped public hospitals in remote areas escape financial doom thanks to more government funding, an official from the Public Health Ministry said.
Dr Kiartiphum Wongrachit, the ministry’s permanent secretary, said on Friday that small public hospitals’ financial problems were eased after the government began giving them more funds to tend to Covid-19 patients.
Normally, he said, hospitals are granted funds based on the number of patients they treat over a year, and medical facilities in remote areas usually get small sums due to few patients.
On a scale from one to seven based on the severity of financial problems, 39 small public hospitals were at level six in 2020, but this reduced to eight last year and zero this year, Kiartiphum said.
There were 15 hospitals at the worst level of financial crisis in 2020, and the number reduced to one last year and zero this year.
He added that up to 829 or 92 per cent of 900 public hospitals in Thailand had a good financial standing in the first quarter of this year.
The number of hospitals in the bad (6th) and worst (7th) levels of financial crisis from 2011 to 2020 is as follows:
2011: 115 hospitals (worst), 15 hospitals (bad)
2012: 123 hospitals (worst), 17 hospitals (bad)
2013: 58 hospitals (worst), 10 hospitals (bad)
2014: 78 hospitals (worst), 17 hospitals (bad)
2015: 136 hospitals (worst), 33 hospitals (bad)
2016: 119 hospitals (worst), 22 hospitals (bad)
2017: 87 hospitals (worst), 124 hospitals (bad)
2018: 42 hospitals (worst), 99 hospitals (bad)
2019: 17 hospitals (worst), 79 hospitals (bad)
2020: 15 hospitals (worst), 39 hospitals (bad)
