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• Service providers reject civil servants medical aid

Harare Bureau
Premier Services Medical Aid Society members will now have to fork out cash to receive treatment after the society instructed service providers to demand cash upfront.

PSMAS said the move was aimed at preventing its debt to health service providers from ballooning and to avoid further litigation.

The medical aid society is being sued by a number of service providers for defaulting on settling claims.

More than 30 health service providers have been instructed not to accept the society’s medical aid packages and members who seek their services will have to apply for reimbursement from the society’s offices.

The medical aid society said stopping the service providers from treating patients on its medical aid was part of its strategy to avoid further litigation at a time it was facing grounding liquidity challenges.

PSMAS interim manager Gibson Mhlanga yesterday confirmed the move and revealed that the society faced about $8 million in litigation since December last year.

He said the embargo was only aimed at service providers who sued the society.

“We’re trying to limit our litigation because if they continue to take us to court we’ve no defence, so they will come and attach our properties,” he said.

“What we want to avoid is for them to continue going to court and getting judgments against us. So, we only sent those letters to about 30 general practitioners, optometrists and medical laboratories who sued us since December 2014.

“The service providers seem to have understood our position, so we haven’t had any complaints from them or our members.”

Mhlanga said Premier Service Medical Investments and other health service providers continued to attend to PSMAS members.

“These ones have understood our challenges and we’re putting other mechanisms in place both in the short-term and long-term to ensure that we don’t shortchange our members,” he said.

“The problem is if other service providers hear that some of them are refusing to attend to our members it puts pressure on them. But we’re doing everything possible to make sure we also address their concerns.”

The health service providers have been filing their applications at the High Court separately since December last year.

Patients have been complaining that PSMAS health institutions are always congested and it takes long and even days for one to be admitted at Baines Hospital in Harare, the society’s major hospital.

The majority of the society’s clients are civil servants.

Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa recently said the liquidity challenges facing the country resulted in Treasury failing to remit PSMAS subscriptions.

Apex Council team leader and Zimbabwe Teachers Association president Richard Gundani yesterday called for dialogue between the government, PSMAS and health service providers to find a lasting solution to the problem.

“All the stakeholders involved in the health care provision including the government, PSMAS and health service providers must sit and come up with an agreement on how to provide service to members. They’re there to ensure there’s health provision, so they should come up with a solution.”

Apex Council is the top representative body for all civil servants.

PSMAS’s problems have been largely blamed on the mega salaries which were being awarded to ousted chief executive Cuthbert Dube and his executives.

Dube was taking home more than $500,000 in salaries and allowances each month, at a time the medical aid society was failing to pay the health service providers and was accumulating the debt.