Bascome: HIP Backlog Cleared
7 August 2008 | The Royal Gazette
Eighteen months since the Ministry of Health acknowledged the backlog in their Health Insurance Plan (HIP) it has been cleared.
According to Nelson Bascome, Minister of Health, ten years of HIP claims to the Department of Social Insurance have been dealt with after 18 months of hard work by both full and part time staff.
The backlog included payment for claims to the Bermuda Hospitals Board, pharmacists, the LCCA, local insurers, individuals who paid hospital bills out of pocket and local physicians. However, not happy to sit on their laurels, Minister Bascome said the Health Department would also be focused on attaining a vendor for computerisation of the programme.
He said: "The public is well aware of the problems that have plagued HIP for many years. I am so pleased to report that following a Herculean effort by our temporary and permanent staff within the Department of Social Insurance, HIP is now paying claims received during this fiscal year.
"The promise to achieve this goal may have preceded me but it is with a great sense of satisfaction that I can report mission accomplished. Our goal now is to ensure that we don't just remain current but that we continually improve our turnaround time of payment to our clients.
"We will shortly determine a vendor for automating the HIP claims processing function and, once that solution, is implemented, we will have brought HIP fully into the 21st Century."
Minister Bascome also recognised yesterday that much public criticism has been levelled at the HIP programme with many doctors asking those patients to pay up front.
Two surveys done by this paper over the past year found a number of physicians' practices that were struggling to get paid for their services by HIP and were asking those patients to pay upfront.
Patients had also contacted this paper saying they could not get reimbursed for surgeries they had paid out-of-pocket for and the daughter of one elderly patient said her mother had died before her doctor's bill was reimbursed by HIP.
The Government's HIP is a standard health insurance plan for $218.61 each month for someone under 65 and $201.50 for seniors who can have the premiums taken directly out of their pension.
In May this year, Minister Bascome announced that HIP would add $70,000 to the $30,000 already allocated towards kidney transplants by the Mutual Reinsurance Fund (MRF) for their clients.
Policy-holders will also get $500 a year toward costs to see specialists, such as outpatients or visitors to a doctor's surgery.
More than 5,250 people are policy-holders with up to 135,000 claims made each year.
And now these claims, thanks to the hard work of the staff should be processed in a timely fashion, according to the Health Minister. "HIP has suffered a great deal of public criticism, particularly over the last two years. We openly admitted that we were not providing a good service to our clients," he said.
"I must thank each member of the staff for their efforts to achieve this goal. The Director of Social Insurance Ms Karen Daniels and Assistant Director Mr. Collin Anderson come in for special praise.
"They have lived through some very dark days during this exercise but in real Cup Match style, they stuck to the wicket and have seen this through to a successful conclusion."
In the coming weeks, the Department will be reconciling payments made to specific physicians to ensure that the calculations we made are in line with their record of what they are owed.
