An association of state-run hospitals nationwide said it boycotted a meeting on Monday called by the National Health Security Office (NHSO) because the office has ignored its opinions on a budget allocation plan for the hospitals for the coming 2025 fiscal year, starting Oct 1.
Dr Anukul Thaitanundr, director of Ratchaburi Hospital and the president of the State-Run Hospitals Club, told the media on Wednesday that proposals made by the hospitals at past meetings had never been considered.
The hospitals' calls for fair financial compensation for their losses in past months, for instance, had fallen on deaf ears, even though such losses resulted from the NHSO's abrupt change in how it calculated rates of reimbursement for the healthcare services these hospitals provided to patients under the NHSO's universal healthcare scheme.
Worse still, the association couldn'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.
Dr Anukul said one thing the association believes would help improve transparency in the NHSO's annual budget planning for the universal healthcare scheme is to call a meeting of all parties concerned so they can share opinions, learn from one another, and have a clear picture of the scheme's overall financial situation.
He said the NHSO is holding separate meetings for different groups of hospitals participating in the scheme, namely hospitals under the Ministry of Public Health, teaching hospitals, and some other groups of hospitals. This way, he said, each healthcare provider group is left in the dark about how the NHSO decides which group will receive what rate of healthcare cost reimbursement.
It was unclear whether he thought this was a deliberate strategy to silence the critics or keep the hospitals from forming a united front as they advocate for change. "It's most important that all of these healthcare units are brought together for a meeting to have their opinions heard while also learning from experience and problems of one another," Dr Anukul said.
One source said about 91 state-run hospitals under the universal healthcare scheme are on the verge of a severe financial crisis due to high losses following the NHSO's sudden change in its calculating healthcare reimbursement, especially the reimbursement rate for in-patient treatment.
Last week, Atthaporn Limpanyalert, deputy secretary-general of the NHSO, defended the office's decision, saying that if the office hadn't lowered the healthcare cost reimbursement, the National Health Security Fund would be about 10 billion baht in the red now.
However, the in-patient care reimbursement rate will become the usual rate as it was before in the coming 2025 fiscal year, he said.