Gansu: Drug costs increase pushing up medical charges

On July 24, the Statistics and Information Center of the Health Department of Gansu Province announced statistics on the status of over treatment of medical institutions in Gansu Province and the improvement of service quality and efficiency in the first quarter of the year, including Gansu Provincial People’s Hospital, Gansu Provincial Hospital, and Lanzhou University’s First Hospital. Second hospitals of Lanzhou University, Second People's Hospital of Gansu Province, Third People's Hospital of Gansu Province, Gansu Provincial Cancer Hospital, Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Gansu Province, Affiliated Hospital of Gansu Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine and other nine provincial hospitals made queuing analysis. The data shows that in the first quarter, the average medical expenses for outpatients in 9 hospitals increased by 5.56% compared with the whole year of 2010; the per capita medical expenses for inpatients increased by 1.67%.

The average outpatient expenses and average hospitalization expenses for 9 hospitals in the province. In the first quarter of the province, the average medical expenses for outpatients in the nine hospitals was 231.04 yuan, an increase of 12.17 yuan over the previous year, an increase of 5.56%, of which the drug fee was 108.65 yuan, an increase of 16.5 yuan over the previous year, an increase of 17.91%; The medical expenses for inpatients were 1,091.63 yuan, an increase of 146.44 yuan over the previous year, an increase of 1.67%, of which the drug fee was 3,718.38, an increase of 298.18 yuan over the previous year, an increase of 8.72%. The increase in patient costs in 9 provincial hospitals is mainly due to the increase in drug costs for outpatients and inpatients.

The three hospitals with the highest average medical expenses per patient in the first quarter were 407.60 yuan in the Third People's Hospital of Gansu Province, 301.01 yuan in the Second Hospital of Lanzhou University, and 244.91 Yuan in the First Hospital of Lanzhou University; the three hospitals with the highest average hospitalization costs were Lanzhou University. The second hospital was 12788.27 yuan, the Chinese medicine hospital of Gansu Province was 10678.90 yuan, and the Gansu Provincial People's Hospital was 10540.07 yuan. Compared with the national tertiary hospitals in 2010, the per capita medical expenses for outpatients and inpatients in 9 hospitals in our province were lower by 2.8 yuan and 606.84 yuan respectively.