Health ministry wants to write off $290m
The health ministry has given up on collecting $290 million in unpaid hospital bills between April 1999 and June 2001 and is seeking permission from the finance ministry to write off the debt.
Grace Allen-Young, the permanent secretary in the health ministry, told yesterday’s meeting of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the request to allow the write-off was made last September, but there has not been a response.
Allen-Young said that the outstanding debt was made primarily of fees owed by people who had not met their obligations as well as money from people who have been deemed unable to pay.
“The Government tells us that nobody must be denied health services or certificates or births and deaths as a result of inability to pay,” she told PAC members.
Most services in Jamaica’s public hospital used to be totally free, but in recent years the Government has introduced a cost-recovery, demanding that hospital users pay a portion of the cost of delivering the service.
For this fiscal year, which closes at month-end, the Government projected to collect just under $900 million. These collections would beef up to the estimated $6.13 billion allocated to the four regional health authorities as well as the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) to finance the provision of services in the hospital and clinics that they run.
But officials have consistently complained for high levels of payment delinquency and have periodically gone on collection drives.
Yesterday, Opposition member of the PAC, Mike Henry, voiced his disgust at the high level of uncollected fees, but mostly blamed weak accounting in the health system for the problem.
Stressing that “Jamaica lacks a system of accountability”, he called for a more “efficient registration process” at hospitals and clinics in order to track debtors who often used aliases and nicknames.
Allen-Young, however, explained that the regional health authorities have, in fact, put measures in place to improve the collection of fees.
Among these measures are:
. the establishment of special units in all hospitals to follow up on the collection of amounts owed;
. educational signs posted in all hospitals pointing out the importance of paying fees; and
. ongoing training of all officers involved in fee collection, with an emphasis on the training of assessment officers to ensure proper billing of clients.