Less than half of the NT$2.5 billion (US$82.3 million) budget allocated by the government last year to hire more nurses and improve their working conditions at hospitals was spent for that purpose, the Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation said yesterday.
Citing statistics compiled by the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA), Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation researcher Lee Yun-ting (李芸婷) said that since 2009, the government has appropriated a total of NT$9.1 billion sourced from NHI income to hospitals nationwide in an effort to address the ever-worsening nurse shortage and nurse-patient ratios, including NT$2.5 billion last year and NT$2 billion this year.
“However, of the 492 hospitals and medical centers that received funding last year, only 49 percent actually used the money to hire more nurses or increase their incentives and overtime pay, with 14 percent failing to do so and 34 percent even reducing their nursing workforce,” Lee said.
Singling out the Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital and the Wan Fang Hospital, Lee said the two hospitals were each allocated approximately NT$14 million last year, but the former made 35 nurses redundant and the latter dismissed 11.
“Despite the increase in the proportion of hospitals using the money to hire extra nursing staff from 45 percent in 2012 to 49 percent last year, the increase was too modest to bring in real changes, or to assuage the hopelessness and despair felt by most grassroots healthcare providers in the country,” Lee said.
In addition, the administration’s statistics also showed that in 2011 and 2012, 11 and six hospitals respectively were asked to give back part of the nursing quality improvement funds they received after being found to have misused the funding, such as holding staff banquets, purchasing sweaters and holding company trips, Lee said.
It is also worth noting that a total of 147 hospitals spent the funds on “other items” in 2011, including the Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and the Taipei Veterans General Hospital, both of which used nearly NT$10 million of the funds they were given on such matters.
“These hospitals’ failure to make every penny of the funds count will only add further to healthcare workers’ already miserable predicaments,” Lee said, urging the government to overhaul the regulations governing the use of the funds to prevent more NHI income from going down the drain.
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