As we told you at the top of the news, the Board of the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital has asked the Auditor General to come in and look into the expenditures from its Finance Department. They're trying to ensure that the recent purchases of 2 X-Ray Machines represents value for true value for money.
But while that's the Hospital's newest financial concern, what is also of importance to them is that the public, whom they serve, owes them unpaid hospital bills to the tune of some 11 million dollars.
That's important because the hospital receives referral for most emergency and trauma cases, and those complex medical procedures which the smaller hospitals around the country are not equip to handle.
Today, Chairman Chandra Nisbet-Cansino told us that the outstanding bills represents a loss of revenue which affects the level of service that the hospital can provide when there are spike in violent crime, as has recently been affecting areas of Belize City:
Chandra Nisbet-Cansino, Chairman, KHMH Board
"The subvention that we received from government in excess of 80% goes to paying salaries and so the hospital is then task to raise money to run the hospital. As you know it's not cheap to run a hospital the size of Karl Heusner, we have extended our services a lot more. We are making improvements in the intensive care unit for adults and children and so the monies that we raised are to run the hospital. I think it was about a year and a half ago that we had acquire the services of Credit Masters to assist us in collecting bills. We had an outstanding bill of 11 million dollars. The truth is that a lot of people go to Karl Heusner and they used the services and they don't pay the bills particularly in times when the streets are very violent all the patients are taken to Karl Heusner, its very expensive to manage trauma case particularly if they are severely ill and they have to put on life support and so a lot of those patients don't end up paying their bills and so a lot of the resources are exhausted during that period. So going back to your question about Credit Master, they were ask to come in and collecting some of those bills. Yes that has been somewhat successful, some people were not very happy when they received their letters and we deal with those on a case by case basis particularly if they can't pay the bill, then they will go into Karl Heusner and speak with the social worker and see what they can work out, so that has been successful to a certain extent."
The Chairman says that each bill is deal with on a case by case basis.
Email
Print