BEIRUT: The Health Ministry has shaken up its list of hospital rankings after adding patient satisfaction and financial integrity to the criteria list, Minister Wael Abu Faour announced Monday.
Six hospitals slipped from rank A to rank B after dozens of Lebanese hospitals were examined under the new standards, Faour said in a televised news conference.
Three hospitals experienced a more severe drop, falling from A to C, while 23 others were pushed down from B to C.
Only four hospitals went up in ranking, jumping from class B to A, Abu Faour said.
Hospitals with higher ranks receive more government subsidies.
The new rating system came after Abu Faour announced a reform proposal for the health sector, saying that hospital violations could no longer be tolerated. The plan included a new classification criteria list in which patient satisfaction and an audit of hospital bills were introduced for the first time.
Abu Faour introduced a new, electronic system to audit 100 percent of hospital bills, after an old, manual method could only examine 10 percent of the records.
Hospitals that showed a significant difference between the bills they submitted to the ministry and the services they were actually offering will be punished with a lower rating.
The minister explained that the differences, or what the policy calls “reductions,” occur either when the hospital sets higher prices for the services, or when it illegally increases the bills submitted to the ministry.
Apart from the two main elements, the criteria also included the extent to which a hospital receives a wide range of cases and whether or not they have an intensive care room.
Hospitals that did not score high in this study will have another chance, as the ministry will collect the data again in six months and issue new classifications.
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