Public medical facilities that took on a greater share of COVID-19 patients also bore the brunt of the financial fallout due to poor financial support from the government, a filing showed Thursday.

On the other hand, the best-resourced private hospitals appeared to have benefited from government relief provided to secure more beds for seriously ill COVID-19 patients while keeping existing patients suffering from other diseases at the same time.

The financial aid varied by hospitals depending on the number of patients, according to the KHIDI. Public medical hospitals had to let other patients leave because they had to take more COVID-19 patients, it added.

The National Medical Center, one of the institutes on the front lines of the pandemic, increased its losses during the pandemic, with deficits of 70.3 billion won in 2020 ($52.41 million), nearly a twofold increase from 34 billion won in 2019, according to a fiscal year financial report of public and private health care institutions in 2022 published by the Korea Health Industry Development Institution. It suffered a financial loss of 57.7 billion won in 2021 and 72.7 billion won in 2022.

The report didn’t disclose the amount of financial aid the institutions had received, citing confidentiality.

The Seoul Red Cross Hospital, another public medical facility that was designated as an infectious disease hospital, suffered a loss of 35.4 billion won in 2020, an increase of nearly sixfold from 5.4 billion won in 2019, followed by losses of 11.6 billion won in 2021 and 23.9 billion won in 2022.

Such public hospitals were often unable to accept non-COVID patients during the pandemic or temporarily halted operations after treating confirmed patients. Their operations haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels because patients with other diseases left during the pandemic, and the rate of return is slow, according to reports citing the medical industry.

They also called for more government support, saying the hospitals had prioritized COVID-19 patients and adhered to government treatment guidelines.

But the so-called “big five hospitals” stayed in the black thanks to relief funds provided by the government to compensate health care providers’ financial losses in the same period. The big five refers to the Seoul National University Hospital, Severance Hospital, Samsung Medical Center, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital and Asan Medical Center.

In particular, Asan Medical Center saw a stark increase in its other income through compensation, with its revenue jumping from 4.9 billion won in 2019 to 8 billion won in 2020, 73.3 billion won in 2021 and 109.7 billion won in 2022.

Severance Hospital, which categorized the financial support as donations, also witnessed a surge in revenue, with donations soaring to 39.9 billion won in 2020, 84.8 billion won in 2021 and 83.9 billion won in 2022, according to the data. The hospital’s total donations were just 15.2 billion won in 2019.