Impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on public hospitals operation and the countermeasures: public hospitals in Wenzhou as an example / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To provide countermeasures and suggestions for the current operation and management of public hospitals by analyzing the impacts of COVID-19 on public hospitals′ operation.Methods:Collection of operation data of 44 public hospitals in Wenzhou from January to March in both 2019 and 2020. By means of descriptive analysis and financial analysis, we analyzed the impacts of the pandemic on the hospitals′ business, revenue and expenditure structure.Results:As of April 2020, even the outpatients visits and inpatient at Wenzhou public hospitals had significantly rebounded, and the downrange for the same periods of 2019 was as high as 23.12% and 17.37% respectively. April witnessed the total medical service revenue of 44 hospitals business totaled 17.44 billion yuan, down 15.43%from the previous year and up 17 percentage points compared to the decline in the first quarter(at 32.54%). As the pandemic moves into a normalized state for epidemic prevention and control, the recovery of medical business was slow, while expenditure of manpower costs and epidemic prevention costs had increased instead. Capital pressure would be the biggest pressure for most hospitals.Conclusions:The hospitals need to further strengthen their operation of fine management and cost control, for sustainable development. It is suggested that government departments should continue to increase effective investment in public health, reduce hospitals′ social insurance premiums in stages, further promote the implementation of online medical service pricing policies, especially Internet hospitals, and relax hospitals′ working capital loan access to ensure liquidity turnover.