PM: Hospitals misused fees

By JEFFREY ELAPA
HOSPITALS collect about K13 million annually from patients as medical fees – but this will be no more with the introduction of the free medical fee policy.
Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said when responding to series of questions from opposition leader Dame Carol Kidu that the Port Moresby General Hospital alone collected K2 million as hospital fees.
But he said these funds were misused by officials who collected them.
O’Neill said the funds should have been used to improve hospital services and to purchase drugs and necessary equipment.
He said the government had to subsidise this so that people could receive free health care and that the funds go directly for hospital purposes.
There has been a lot of consultation before the government decided to provide free health care.
He assured Dame Carol that it was not done in isolation as she might have thought.
The government allocated K100 million for health care while another K350 million was for the public and referral hospitals in the country.
The community service obligation will cease and the K50 million allocation will go toward funding health care.
O’Neill said another K30 million held in trust accounts would then be used to fund health.
He said there was no need to hold surplus funds in trust accounts when there was a need to provide better health care.
AusAID will be directly involved in the management of the funds.
O’Neill said the former government had initiated a national health plan costing K1.4 billion but the funding was poor.
The government is on target to meet the projection target of K1.4 billion to improve the health care of the people in PNG.
“We are promising better education and health care for our people and that is what we are doing,’’ he said.