Stop detaining patients over bills, hospitals told

Masvingo Bureau
GOVERNMENT has ordered public hospitals countrywide to stop detaining patients over failure to settle their bills, urging health institutions to find alternative methods of recovering debts. The move comes following an outcry from the public over the practice that had become common across public hospitals countrywide.

Health and Child Care Deputy Minister Paul Chimedza on Wednesday said Government had since ordered provincial medical directors from all the country’s provinces and chief executive officers of major public hospitals to stop detaining patients over outstanding hospital bills.

Deputy Min Chimedza said it was not Government policy for public hospitals to detain patients for non-payment of hospital bills.
“We recently held a meeting with all the PMDs (Provincial Medical Directors) from the provinces and the CEOs (chief executive officers) of major public hospitals and we directed them to stop detaining patients over unpaid hospital bills,” he said.

“This means that patients will no longer be detained for failure to pay their bills because it is not Government policy for patients to be treated that way. We gave that directive (to stop detaining patients) to public hospitals following an outcry from the public to Government, complaints were raised against the move to detain patients over bills and we acted on the issue hence the new directive to public hospitals.”

Deputy Min Chimedza, however, exhorted patients to settle their hospital bills for health institutions to continue functioning normally, saying failure to settle debts affected availability of drugs and other essential services at public hospitals. He said public hospitals were supposed to devise strategies of recovering their debts and not detain patients adding that there was nothing wrong with public hospitals engaging debt collectors in trying to recover their debts owed by patients.

Deputy Minister Chimedza said only those below the age of five and above 65 years were exempt from paying at public hospitals, adding that sanctions had severely handicapped the country’s health sector.