Last year, the Leiden university hospital LUMC made a loss of 17.2 million euros on a turnover of 978 million. It is the second solid loss in a row. The hospital had just completed a major new austerity operation after an earlier attempt to save money had failed.
A loss of 5.8 million euros was estimated for 2021, state in the annual accounts which was published Tuesday. The actual loss is therefore three times as great.
The hospital is not in immediate danger. That is because the hospital has traditionally hoarded a lot of money, and on top of that it took out new loans from banks last year.
The reason that the loss is so much greater than budgeted, as can be read in the annual accounts, is that the cutbacks have not yet been successful enough. In addition, according to a spokesperson, there has been a lot of absenteeism due to the corona crisis. The hospital was able to provide less care than usual.
The LUMC has now announced that it will cut spending more quickly. How exactly, a spokesperson could not say on Tuesday. There should be a plan for that in October. The hospital does not expect to have to cut more costs due to the loss than the aforementioned decrease in expenditure of 54 million euros in 2023.
Financially healthy for years
It is striking that for many years the LUMC was very financially healthy. In 2015, the hospital had no less than 235 million euros in equity. Accountant EY insisted on ‘unsaving’ and the LUMC devised an investment program. This consisted of about fifteen projects in the field of research, education and care. There was also an increase of hundreds of FTEs between 2017 and 2020.
At the beginning of 2019, if the hospital is still making a profit, there will be internal warnings about rising personnel costs and a contraction in the available budget. In the future, there could be a budget deficit, according to the financial director. In that year a cutback operation is agreed, but it is too non-committal. In 2020, a cutback of 14 million should take place. In practice, it is only possible to achieve structural savings of 1 to 2 million.
Things are going to get serious in 2021. NRC wrote last fall about the internal unrest within the hospital when it turned out that hospital departments had to cut costs by an average of nine percent. In internal correspondence to the board, 24 department heads wrote about their “great concern.” They call it “unfeasible” to make cutbacks just like that and speak of “a lot of damage in the long term”.
At the beginning of this year it was announced that 350 to 400 jobs will be lost at the hospital. Mostly through natural attrition, but the hospital thinks to have to lay off a maximum of a hundred men† This mainly concerns support services, such as human resources and the IT department. Nursing departments are “greatly spared”, according to the hospital.