NHIF’s payments to hospitals up by 60% in the 2006-2009 period

Payments for hospital aid increased by 60% in the 2006-2009 period, showed data from an analysis of the National Healthcare Insurance Fund (NHIF) on the growth in hospitalisations and the money paid for these over the past five years, NHIF announced yesterday.

In 2006, NHIF paid to hospitals about BGN 62,050,000 per month on average, while last year this amount exceeded BGN 96.2 mln. NHIF specified that the main reason for the rising costs of hospital aid was the hospitalisation of patients who could have been treated in outpatient care establishments.

According to NHIF’s experts, repeated hospitalisations are yet another major problem. An inspection has established that 300,000 patients were hospitalised more than once a year and the stay in hospitals of only 3% of them was medically justified. In the remaining cases, the patients were hospitalised with the aim of getting financial resources.

According to the analysis, the established upward trend persists in 2010 and the number of hospitalisations is expected to reach 2,08,000 by the year's end.

NHIF also reported that, via the introduction of delegated budgets, the fund aims to control costs in hospital aid, the goal being to reduce the number of unnecessary hospitalisations generating costs in the hospital sector.