Society

In-debt hospitals 'gouging patients'

By Li Yao and Shan Juan (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-17 09:15

Medical bills are being run up to improve the bottom line: expert

BEIJING - Nine county-level hospitals out of 10 are running with massive debts and are pushing up their medical bills in a bid to strengthen their balance sheets, the director of the Chinese Hospital Association has said.

In addition, they are struggling with a lack of government funding, said Cao Ronggui. He was speaking during a forum of hospital chiefs in Wuhan, Hubei province, on Sunday.

"These hospitals do not have their expenses fully covered by public funds and have become profit-driven in order to offset their debts," he explained.

Each debt-ridden county-level hospital faces debts that average more than 26 million yuan ($4 million), Changjiang Daily, a Wuhan newspaper, reported on Monday.

According to Cao, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Health have formulated a plan to allocate 36 billion yuan during the next three years to support 2,176 county-level hospitals. The plan aims to have at least one hospital in every county providing adequate services.

Cao added that county-level hospitals had increased in number and expanded in capacity in recent years, thanks to continuous government grants. Currently, there are 9,621 county-level hospitals, some 46 percent of all hospitals in China.

In 2010, county-level hospitals provided 1.33 million beds. They received 690 million visits from patients - 46.8 percent more than in 2005, according to Cao.

County-level hospitals are also plagued with a set of other problems, including a shortage of high-quality medical staff and experienced specialists and a high rate of job-hopping. They are also said to have under-equipped facilities and infrastructure, a lack of trust from patients and poor management, he said.

Wu Ming, a professor at Peking University's School of Public Health, said some county-level hospitals lack government funding and some are deep in debt but one does not necessarily cause the other.

"It is misleading to establish an oversimplified correlation that debt-ridden hospitals need more taxpayers' money to regain their financial health," she said. "A hospital running a debt is not necessarily a failure and does not need the government to rescue it."

She said hospitals - both at the grassroots level and the big ones in major cities - often run up debts for their daily operation and take out loans to improve infrastructure. Some have debts with banks and pharmaceutical companies running into the millions or even hundreds of millions, which they usually manage to pay back, she added.

"I am not against the idea of investing more in hospitals at the grassroots level but questions like 'how much more is enough' and 'what specific areas need more funds' have to be addressed on a case-by-case basis," she said.