TEHRAN- The health ministry has devised a new scheme for turning hospitals into bigger networks, announced the ministry’s director of hospitals management and clinical services development department, adding that details will be finalized by the end of the current [Iranian calendar] month (July 22). 

According to Behzad Kalantari, it is not financially justified to pay for administration of some small hospitals, so such small hospitals can become a subsidiary of bigger hospitals; it means that they will no longer have an autonomous chief, team of administration or financing staff; instead, the bigger hospital will manage all the network hospitals.
“In network hospitals, everything will be shared; the supplies, the budget, and even the physicians will share their services with smaller hospitals. The personnel in subsidiary hospitals will also be paid by the network hospital,” ISNA quoted Kalantari as saying on Saturday. 

Will all small hospitals become part of a network? 
According to Kalantari, there are currently 82 hospitals with less than 32 beds and 265 with less than 100 beds; however, individual decision will be made about each hospital, because the number of beds is not the only thing to take into account. Activities of the hospital, its distance from the network hospital and the possibility of sharing some services are all need to be taken into account, Kalantari added. 

We have made some initial decisions, for example, from the 82 hospitals that have less than 32 beds, 50 of them meet the criteria to go under the supervision of a bigger hospital.
“We have made some initial decisions, for example, from the 82 hospitals that have less than 32 beds, 50 of them meet the criteria to go under the supervision of a bigger hospital,” he said.  

“In general, there are 1000 hospitals in the country, including private and public ones. 47% of all the hospitals have less than 100 beds and 80% of all hospitals have less than 200 beds. The rest of hospitals have more than 200 beds, but the majority of such big hospitals are government-owned.”

“One of the possibilities is that we turn 624 public hospitals into 200 holding networks,” he added. 

“The network hospital system is going to be only applied to public hospitals; however, the private hospitals can use our final blueprint as well for starting network hospitals; because the main objective of this scheme is saving money and it can be used by everyone,” he remarked. 

Earlier this month, an official with the health ministry announced that 40 new hospitals will be inaugurated over the current Iranian calendar year (to end March 2020). 

According to Reza Rezaei, the director for budget at the health ministry’s department of treatment, these new hospitals will include 5,500 beds. Currently, there are around 100,000 hospital beds in the country. 

SJ/MG