Sign-off to be referred under Croke Park deal

Donal Duffy, IHCA

By Gary Culliton.

The “timely completion” of private patient claim forms is among the issues the Minister for Health wishes to see addressed under the Croke Park Agreement, among measures aimed at boosting “efficiencies, productivity increases and reform”.

It is intended that more hospitals will achieve the same income collection standard as the better-performing hospitals, and a target of €50 million in accelerated income has been set for 2012.

Labour Deputy Kevin Humphreys alleged in the Dáil there was “a loss of €76 million to the State” as a result of hospital consultants not signing off on health insurance claim forms in a timely manner. Minister Dr James Reilly said he had indicated an intention to have health service management engage with the consultant representative bodies on the matter.

While the consultant signature is an important stage in the process, there are a significant number of other stages in advance of and subsequent to that, where delays can arise, the IHCA argued.  “Consultants are also required to sign similar forms in private hospitals and the debtor days in those institutions are considerably less than at the HSE,” said the IHCA’s Assistant Secretary General Donal Duffy. “Consultants themselves have an interest in signing off insurance claim forms. The most common complaint the IHCA receives from its members is in respect of the delay in having the duly-completed claim forms made available to them for signature by the hospital.”

Significant parts of the insurance documentation are normally completed by the patient and hospital administration staff.

gary.culliton@imt.ie