Hospitals may get a greater incentive to treat novel coronavirus patients, under a new government proposal that seeks to offset the loss of revenue faced by medical institutions, which have had to divert hospital beds and cut back on regular outpatient consultations when accommodating COVID patients.
The Finance Ministry and the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry are working out the details of the system, with an eye for rolling it out by the end of this fiscal year.
To pay for the program, the government is planning to dip into the 5 trillion yen virus reserve fund set aside in the FY2021 budget, as well as the national health insurance coffers, which have been fuller than projected as people increasingly shied away from the doctor's office over fears of infection.
Financial aid will be made available in prefectures whose medical delivery systems have been deemed to be "strained," a metric based on the number of infections and hospital bed occupancy rate.
To qualify for the new system, medical institutions will be required to accept a certain number of COVID patients, while still maintaining or improving the working conditions of their doctors and nurses. Medical institutions whose income has exceeded pre-pandemic levels will not be eligible.
The program is not without precedent. In the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, subsidies enabled medical institutions to recoup lost revenue, calculated by comparing past income to estimated national health insurance payments based on Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry filings.
Of the nearly 8,200 hospitals in Japan, only a quarter have accepted COVID patients, deterred by the risk of becoming an infection cluster and concerns over social stigmas associated with the virus.
In part motivated by the surge in infections with coronavirus variants, the new system would further bolster the financial aid already being allocated to medical institutions, including small clinics, from the 4 trillion yen emergency comprehensive support subsidy to cover the personnel costs of doctors and nurses, and secure beds for COVID-19 patients.
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