Koforidua, July 20, GNA - The Manager of the New Juaben Mutual Health Insurance Scheme, Mr Otti Frimpong, has blamed service providers for the delay in the payment of the bills they submitted to the District Mutual Health Insurance schemes.

He said often the service providers inflated the service charges. Mr Frimpong said the schemes had to invite the officials of the service providers or the hospitals to a discussion on the bills submitted.

He said such frequent discussions and the poor staffing of the claims department of the schemes delayed payment of bills and lead to compilation.

He was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Koforidua in reaction to the complains that some of the schemes were owing the Eastern Regional Hospital over three billion cedis as at the end of June and this was likely to affect the quality of service offered by the hospital. Mr Frimpong said if the hospitals wanted to increase the cost of their services due to an increase in the prices of inputs, there was the need for them to call on the management of the schemes for negotiations. He said the schemes would not agree to any unilateral decisions on prices taken by the service providers. Mr Frimpong said the scheme had not been able to honour 30 per cent of the monthly bills submitted by the Eastern Regional Hospital.

Mr Frimpong said the scheme had received the June bill from the Regional Hospital and would ensure that it paid 70 per cent of the bill as agreed with the service providers while the remaining 30 percent would be vetted before payment was made. Early this month, GNA received a report that District Mutual Health Insurance schemes that received services at the Eastern Regional Hospital, Koforidua, owe the hospital over three billion cedis as at the end of June this year. The report indicated that the situation was affecting the smooth operations of the hospital as its suppliers were threatening to withdraw their services because of the inability of the hospital to honour its schedules of payment. The report expressed the fear that the hospital would be forced to withdraw its services to the defaulting schemes that had registered with it.

Reacting to the report the Director of the hospital, Dr Obeng Apori, denied that the hospital was planning to withdraw its service to the schemes. He confirmed tha t the schemes owe the hospital over three billion cedis but explained that members of the scheme who had paid their premiums had honoured their obligations to the schemes and so it would be unfair for the hospital to refuse to provide them with the services that they required. Dr Apori however blamed the management of the schemes and the National Health Insurance Council for failing to honour their obligations to the service providers.