THE Minister for Health Mr Noonan, has requested a meeting to resolve a dispute about the billing of patients at University College Hospital, Galway. The dispute, involving the Voluntary Health Insurance and the Western Health Board, has led to subscribers being wrongly charged and threatened with legal action, according to the VHI.
Former patients at the hospital, which is the largest in the west, have found themselves at the centre of the row as the VHI is refusing to pay their bills even though they believed they were covered.
In a letter to members, the VHI said the health authority is levying VHI subscribers with the top charges related to private beds, but the beds used in UCHG were not designated as private.
The VHI told members it considered they had been treated insensitively by the health board. If they decided to contest the bills and not pay, the VHI would cover them for reasonable legal costs involved in fighting the charges. In addition, it has asked UCHG to refund any money which VHI members involved have paid in response to bill demands.
Under the Health Services (In-patient) Regulations 1991, a hospital which has a mix of public, private and semi-private beds must nominate the beds which fall into each category. In UCHG there are 67 private, 39 semi-private and 366 public beds designated.
The VHI said those affected should be liable only for the statutory £20 a day levy for a bed in a public hospital, and not bills which in many cases run into hundreds of pounds. An accurate figure on those affected was not available.
A UCHG spokesman confirmed the Minister had requested that a meeting be held with the VHI within the next week in an attempt to resolve the problem.
A VHI spokesman said: "The VHI is `the meat in the sandwich' in these cases. People have been getting bills for private beds which are not designated as private and so don't conform to health service regulations. We cannot pay bills for private beds which are not designated as private.
"We regard the WHB's pursuing our members on these bills as little short of harassment of people who have been wronged in this situation by them not following regulations."
One subscriber, who received a bill for £940 after his child was hospitalised, confirmed that he was told since the bill was for a bed that was not designated as a private one. "But we're like people who insure a car how were we to know that we wouldn't be covered through no fault of our own? It is a big worry."
Senator Frank Fahey (FF) said he had been approached by a number of former patients and their families. "It is wrong that they should find themselves involved in this kind of dispute through no fault of their own. People do not need this additional difficulty after they have been ill, or have been coping with an illness in the family."
One family, whose child was treated at UCHG, had paid the bill and were now being told that the bed was not a private one. Another was facing a bill in the region of £2,000. "The health board has to sort this out speedily as people are getting letters threatening legal action for nonpayment of bills, yet the VHI is saying these bills are not payable anyway," he added.