Funding issues “fall on mute ears”
Described: 12 Sep 2024 at 05: 38
A group of state-run hospitals nationwide boycotted a meeting held on Monday because the NHSO had ignored its recommendations for a budget allocation strategy for the hospitals starting on October 1. The organization boycotted the meeting because the office had ignored its views on the proposed 2025 fiscal year budget.
Ratchaburi Hospital’s director Dr. Anukul Thaitanundr, the club’s leader, and the leader of the State-Run Hospitals Club, told the media on Wednesday that proposals made by the facilities at previous meetings had never been taken into account.
For instance, the hospitals ‘ pleas for fair financial compensation for losses in the past decades had been ignored despite the NHSO’s sudden change in how it determined reimbursement rates for the healthcare solutions these clinics provided to patients under the NHSO’s universal healthcare system.
Worse still, the association could n’t agree with the way the NHSO is handling the scheme’s budget planning, which involves more than 100 billion baht each year, he said.
Calling a gathering of all parties involved may help increase transparency in the NHSO’s annual finances planning for the general healthcare scheme, according to Dr. Anukul, so they can exchange ideas, learn from one another, and get a sense of the scheme’s total financial situation.
He claimed that the NHSO is holding regular meetings for various hospital groups that are a part of the system, including those that are affiliated with the Ministry of Public Health, training hospitals, and some other hospitals. Each medical service party is left in the dark about how the NHSO chooses which team will get what rate of healthcare cost reimbursement, he said.
He did n’t know whether he believed this was a deliberate attempt to silence the critics or prevent the hospitals from forming a front for change. ” It’s most important that all of these medical products are gathered for a conference to include their opinions heard while also learning from one another’s experiences and problems,” Dr. Anukul said.
According to one source, 91 state-run hospitals under the universal healthcare system are in danger of experiencing a severe financial crisis as a result of the NHSO’s rapid change in how the insurance rate for in-patient care is calculated.
Last year, Atthaporn Limpanyalert, assistant secretary-general of the NHSO, defended the company’s choice, saying that if the company had n’t lowered the heath cost insurance, the National Health Security Fund would be about 10 billion baht in the red today.
But, the in-patient care insurance rate will become the normal rate as it was before in the coming 2025 governmental time, he said.