Busy İstanbul Research Hospitals Bordering On Bankruptcy

İstanbul's Çapa and Cerrahpaşa research hospitals, which treat more than 2.5 million people each year, may be forced to declare bankruptcy if they are not allotted additional funding, according to a report in the Cumhuriyet daily on Monday.

Employees have claimed that insufficient funding has prevented the hospitals, which are affiliated with İstanbul University, from performing surgeries and that patients must wait for months to obtain an appointment. They have also stated that necessary structural improvements have not been made in years, and that the hospitals would be destroyed in the event of a major earthquake. Previous news reports have featured interior photos of hospital wings showing a lack of upkeep and shabby conditions.

It was reported last year that the Cerrahpaşa hospital was unable to perform lung X-rays and that the hospital had been in debt to various medical supply companies since 2011. A hospital union report, also from 2014, confirmed that public hospital debt has nearly doubled in recent years and stated that fees paid to university hospitals for healthcare procedures by the Social Security Institution (SGK) have not changed in seven years, as a result of which services that hospitals are able to provide have declined by around 34 percent.

Located in İstanbul's Fatih district, the two large university hospitals are among the most frequented public healthcare facilities in the city.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)