More profits for hospitals

Press, 17 March 1977, Page 5

More profits for hospitals

Wellington Private hospitals in New Zealand experienced some improvement in their financial situation during the year ended March 31, 1976, according to a report by Professor J. T. Ward, of Waikato University. However, the large surgical hospitals still recorded a substantial aggregate loss. The 14 surgical hospitals with between 31 and 100 beds bad an aggregate loss of •124,000 compared with $173,000 for the previous year while the three with more than 100 beds had a combined loss of $659,000. The figure from the previous year was $780,000. The 19 small surgical hospitals (up to 30 beds) improved from an aggregate surplus of $16,000 to $104,000, while medical hospitals showed a significant improvement achieving an aggregate surplus of $936,000 for the 86 hospitals compared with $224,000 the previous year. In his report. Professor Ward notes the medical hospitals benefited more than the surgical group from the introduction of the geriatric benefit in April, 1975. As a

result, almost half of the former group’s income for the year came from patient benefits whereas they represented about one-third of the income of the latter group. The president of the Private Hospitals Association, M* Edgar Whittleston, said it was pleasing there had been an improvement in private hospital finances, but the result should be read with a note of caution. “First, we are concerned about the continuing loss situation of the larger surgical hospitals and the results highlight the necessity to establish a positive and definite base to which the patient benefit can be tied and which then moves in step with the costs. Costs per patient day in surgical hospitals are almost twice those for medical hospitals,” said Mr Wittleston. He said the surplus achieved by the smaller surgical hospitals and the medical hospitals must also be considered in the light of inflation, which lessened the trie value of any profit. In addition, a number of the hospitals were recovering from previous losses.