According to the Nation, Bangkok’s Siriraj Hospital will increase its fees this year in order to close a THB800 million budget gap caused by Thailand’s recent adoption of the THB300 per-day minimum wage and a policy aimed at reducing the cost of prescription drugs for Thai citizens.
Dr Udom Kachintorn, dean of Siriraj’s medical faculty, said that even though the government had set aside a fund to help employers adjust to the new minimum wage, the fund would not cover expenses for 4,000 to 5,000 of Siriraj’s employees, seeing as they were not civil servants.
Siriraj has also named a government policy aimed at reducing the cost of prescription drugs as a cause of its financial troubles.
The hospital has claimed that this policy will force it to use only domestically produced pharmaceuticals and forego their more profitable foreign equivalents.
