Medical institutions and their staff are suffering financial losses after manning the front line in the battle against COVID-19. Many people have reportedly refrained from seeing doctors in recent months out of concern they might be infected during a visit to a hospital or clinic. Institutions that accepted infected people have lost revenue as they were forced to curtail or postpone treatment of other patients while spending extra resources on those hit by the novel coronavirus. Staff at some hospitals are reportedly seeing their summer bonuses cut due to the lost income.
Government support must be extended to prevent the institutions and their staff from hurting because they endeavored to cope with the pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak, which put the hospitals and their doctors and nurses under heavy strain, is testing the resiliency of Japan's health care system. The nation will be failing the test if the medical institutions and staff have to suffer under financial losses as well.
Monetary losses incurred by 133 university-run hospitals across Japan in April and May — due to the overall decline in the number of patients and the extra cost of treating COVID-19 cases — reached a total of ¥31.3 billion, according to a survey by a conference of the heads of those institutions. In the survey, 84 hospitals said the total number of surgical operations performed in May alone declined by more than 30 percent from a year earlier. The combined revenue of the 133 institutions for the month tumbled 16 percent.