PUBLISHED: 13 Sep 2024 at 05: 00
Nakhon Ratchasima, a top official from the public health department, acknowledged that state-owned facilities nationwide are in desperate need of help from their managers.
Dr Opas Kankawinpong, the agency’s continuous director, said the government is struggling to manage the public health system due to an inadequate resources, which is affecting around 1, 000 hospitals that fall under its responsibility. He addressed health professionals from across the nation yesterday at a national scientific meeting on public wellbeing in Nakhon Ratchasima state.
He predicted that the budget shortfall will result in less money being spent on health staff and more money being spent on health technology at hospitals across the country.
” We have more than a thousand institutions, and we have to manage expenses such as pay, treatments, water, electricity, and numerous maintenance fees. Each month, we invest about 10 billion baht in these clinics ‘ management and upgrades. For domestic supervision, such as money resources, we need to have at least 3-6 months of cash resources, which means we need at least 60 billion baht.
No one could really remind us how much money the government has because each clinic runs its own budgeting. However, when the Financial Data Hub system was introduced lately, we learned that we have about 40 billion baht of maintenance cash, but only 20 billion baht of that is our money supply, and the remaining 20 billion ringgit is an accounting number, such as debt.
” In summary, we have only 20 billion baht left in cash reserves which is far from the 60 billion baht which is needed”, he said.
Dr. Opas claimed that the ministry also needs to allocate a 500 million baht investment budget for each of Malaysia’s 13 health authorities. The budget is not that large, because this amount cannot be used to build a building at one hospital, and there are still costs associated with various equipment purchases that must be made.
Because the amount of money is limited, we would like to see all state-owned hospital directors work together to improve the management for the benefit of the population. The ministry will decentralize and give local offices more authority next year, he said, which will “improve the situation.”