Private hospitals look to make a turnaround in 2021
Samorita Hospital, the lone listed healthcare provider, yesterday reported a sharp drop in profit for the last fiscal year, reflecting the sluggish business in the country's private healthcare sector because so many treatment-seekers opted to remain away from hospitals.
The private hospital said its net profit dipped 90 % to Tk 32.5 lakh in the financial year ending in June 2020 from Tk 3.22 crore in the last year.
Samorita blamed the coronavirus disease, that was reported first in early March, for the earnings drop, a view that was echoed by two top officials of the country's well-known Square Hospital and Labaid Specialised Hospital.
"The Covid-19 has eaten up our income from March to June," said Samorita Hospital Managing Director ABM Haroon.
"How will patients come to Dhaka from districts as buses were off the street? For the very first time in 22 years, we're able to not declare any dividend for our shareholders," he said.
He said a healthcare facility had good business in the first eight months of the last fiscal year. Its income and profit dropped also due to increased expenditure for doctors, technicians and other healthcare workers and establishing of facilities for the treating Covid patients.
Md Shariful Islam, company secretary of Samorita Hospital, said the number of patients arriving every day from April to June came right down to 10-12.
Haroon, also the senior vice president of the Bangladesh Private Clinic and Diagnostic Owner's Association (BPCDOA), said aside from a few large hostipal wards that provide multidisciplinary treatment, all had sluggish business from March to August.
"The healthcare sector's business had been totally down through the April-June period as a result of lockdown," said Md EE Yousuf Siddique, chief administrative officer of Square Hospitals.
"Our earnings plunged to significantly less than one-third during that time. Patients didn't visit hospital aside from emergency," he said.
"Referrals also dropped. Business have been really bad in those days," he said, adding that the amount of outpatients dropped to 250 daily in the April-June period from the prior daily average of 1 1,200.
The quantity of in-patients slumped to practically one-third throughout that time from a daily average of 300 previously.
"We had to handle a whole lot of troubles. On the main one hand, our income dropped. Alternatively, our expenditure increased for providing equipment to doctors and nurses, providing allowance and creating accommodation for healthcare providers. Overall, we'd a bad time," he said.
"The situation for nearly all other hospitals have been bad," Siddique said.
This was the very first time the country's private healthcare sector, which had seen a burgeoning growth because the 1990s, suffered a blow.
Buoyed by the government's patronisation and the growing income and health consciousness among the people, practically 15,000 private hospitals, clinics and diagnostic facilities emerged in the health care landscape during the last three decades to focus on growing demand.
No official estimate of the industry's gross annual turnover is available.
However, AM Shamim, managing director of Labaid Group, one of the biggest private sector healthcare providers, earlier said the gross annual turnover will be $6 billion and the sector was growing at 25 % annually before pandemic hit the country.
Today, hostipal wards and clinics have 91,500 beds, which are nearly double that in public areas hospitals, said medical Bulletin 2019.
In 2007, the quantity of private clinics and hospitals was 1,000, and they had 16,000 beds, just half the total beds in the general public sector hospitals, showed official data.
Yesterday Shamim said industry turnover slumped roughly 35 % during the March-July period as doctors didn't sit in the outpatient sections and patients preferred staying home instead of visiting hospitals.
"We saw a sharp fall in both outdoor and inpatients," he said.
However, things started returning to the pre-Covid period since September. "We have started seeing a peak after September," said Yousuf.
Shamim said the industry was likely to grow by 20 per cent next year as the Covid-19 also exposed opportunities for the private medical companies showing their capacity, especially to those well-off persons who used to travel abroad for treatment.
"We have been in a position to win the confidence of many," said Yousuf.
Haroon said the pandemic halted the growth of the sector. "We will recover fully unless the next wave of the pandemic hits us," he said.
Executives of the three hospitals said the sector has started rebounding since September plus they expect another year will be good one.
