The liquidity crisis in Colombia's healthcare system is forcing hospitals in the country's capital to close units to focus their efforts on other services.
A shared video shows images taken by a healthcare worker in the neonatal intensive care unit of the Clínica del Occidente, where the last patient was scheduled to leave on Thursday. The Bogotá hospital, in a letter published last month by local media, stated that its decision to suspend obstetric and neonatology services is due to the billions of pesos owed to it and that it was taken in order to continue providing other types of care. The Hospital Universitario San Ignacio and Clínica Ciudad Roma also recently suspended their services.
The recent closures are a worrying fact for the already deteriorated Colombian medical system. Health and business groups have blamed delays in government payments and insufficient transfers for leaving healthcare companies drowning in debt. In March, long lines began forming with people being turned away empty-handed in front of pharmacies in cities like Bogotá and Cali. This led the government’s independent human rights watchdog to warn that the crisis in the healthcare system had reached “critical” levels.
The Constitutional Court of Colombia declared the formula used by President Gustavo Petro's government to calculate per capita transfers to health insurers insufficient. It argues that dispensaries are hoarding medications in an attempt to blame his administration and sabotage its reform initiatives. This has left companies, known as Health Promotion Entities (EPS), on track to lose more than 4.7 billion dollars between this year and last, according to ACEMI, the industrial group representing several of them.
Petro, the first leftist president of the Andean nation, has been pushing for the expansion of the State's role in the system.
