Names & pictures of defaulting patients to be published

Mr. Mustapha Salifu, has said that the hospital will publish the names and pictures of patients who default in payment of medical bills.

Mr. Salifu, who is the Public Relations Officer of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital has said there are a number of people at the hospital who after treatment, are unable to pay for their medical expenses, a situation that is affecting the operations of the hospital.

"All those patients are occupying beds, which make it impossible for fresh patients to be put on admission," he said in an interview with the Times last Thursday.

Mr Salifu said although some of these patients genuinely cannot pay their bills, others are still at the hospital as a result of their fam¬ily members' irresponsibility.

He explained that in such cases, the Social Welfare Unit at the hospital, which is informed undertakes investigations to establish whether the patients are indeed so poor that they cannot pay.

"When the unit establishes that the patient is indeed a pauper, the hospital waives the medical bill," he said.

Mr Salifu disclosed that last year, over ¢77 million being the medical bills of 120 patients had to be waived by the hospital at a point in time when the unit declared them paupers.

He said patients who are unable to make outright payment and have a good source of livelihood, give an undertaking to the hospital as to the terms of payment and are given flexible terms after producing guarantors.

He noted that sometimes, numerous relatives of the patients are seen around them when they are on admission but as soon as it comes to the payment of their medical bills, they vanish.

He lamented that most often, relatives do not show concern about the plight of patients when on admission but moments after they die, they rush to the mortuary to claim ownership of the body.

He cited instances of some family members filing injunctions to restrain other members of the same family from taking the body, even though none of the groups cared about the patient prior to his or her death.

Mr. Salifu said that the hospital is considering publishing the names and pictures of all patients who had defaulted in the payment of their medical expenses and called for a comprehensive educational programme on the need for every Ghanaian to register under the NHIS to avoid such unpleasant situations of being detained for non-payment of medical bills.

He said even those who have registered under the scheme and have not been able to pay their premium are considered when they find themselves in such difficulty, adding that about 40,000 people benefited from the NHIS last year through the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.