News / Health
Hospital battles to recover $100m from patients, engages debt collectors
13 Apr 2013 at 05:39hrs | Views
HARARE Central Hospital is battling to recover $10 million owed by patients who received treatment from the health facility on credit and has since engaged debt collectors to recover their dues.
In an interview with NewsDay, Harare Hospital's clinical director George Vera said they were failing to cope because they were owed money by patients who, after being discharged, became unreachable.
"80% of the patients who seek medical assistance here have no money and in the end, we dip into our pockets and treat them using our own financial resources. So we have to stretch every dollar that we have," Vera said.
"We are owed over $10 million to date by patients and this is caused by the patients who give false addresses. We have failed to recover our money. Others, unfortunately, die and we can't recover that money. So we have since engaged a debt recovery company which will try to recover the costs, but we will be very lucky to recover at least a million."
He said the institution was experiencing very serious cashflow problems, which were now compromising the hospital standards.
"We are having serious cashflow problems and our operations are being hampered. Imagine if the
$10 million is collected, this institution would improve and meet the expected standards," Vera said.
He said because of that, the hospital had since adopted measures to reduce the incidence of non-payment.
"We have also adopted a situation where we are now identifying the person responsible for paying the fees because that is where we were having problems. Before, the sick person used to be the one responsible for paying the hospital fees, but we realised that 80% of the patients are not the ones who are responsible for
paying their hospital fees and we could not really follow up after that."
The hospital said it had written off some debts as there was no hope of recovering the money.
In an interview with NewsDay, Harare Hospital's clinical director George Vera said they were failing to cope because they were owed money by patients who, after being discharged, became unreachable.
"80% of the patients who seek medical assistance here have no money and in the end, we dip into our pockets and treat them using our own financial resources. So we have to stretch every dollar that we have," Vera said.
"We are owed over $10 million to date by patients and this is caused by the patients who give false addresses. We have failed to recover our money. Others, unfortunately, die and we can't recover that money. So we have since engaged a debt recovery company which will try to recover the costs, but we will be very lucky to recover at least a million."
He said the institution was experiencing very serious cashflow problems, which were now compromising the hospital standards.
$10 million is collected, this institution would improve and meet the expected standards," Vera said.
He said because of that, the hospital had since adopted measures to reduce the incidence of non-payment.
"We have also adopted a situation where we are now identifying the person responsible for paying the fees because that is where we were having problems. Before, the sick person used to be the one responsible for paying the hospital fees, but we realised that 80% of the patients are not the ones who are responsible for
paying their hospital fees and we could not really follow up after that."
The hospital said it had written off some debts as there was no hope of recovering the money.
Source - newsday
