Africa-Press – Liberia. Several discharged patients have been on the ward at the nation’s biggest referral hospital, John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center (JFK), due to their inability to settle their bills. Some, according information gathered by FrontPageAfrica, have been on the ward for up to four months.
FrontPageAfrica
has seen a disturbing video of patients on the ward, some helpless and some lying on the floor at the JFK. The patients, most of them elderly females, are said to have been abandoned by the relatives due to their inability to meet their medical needs and bills.
In the video, a female patient is seen wearing only diapers lying on the bed. She was involved in an accident and had been on the ward for a month, unfortunately, no doctor has attended to her, FPA gathered. She has begun developing bed sores.
Another patient was seen lying on the floor where she had spread a few pieces of cloths and quilt. She was reportedly discharged over four months ago but has not been able to settle her full medical bills, now her condition has begun deteriorating again.
A patient disclosed that she owes the hospital L$216,000 and US$160.00 for which the hospital cannot release her to go home. And the more she stays on the ward, her bills continue to increase.
The room in which most of these patients are in has been labeled “The Abandoned Room” by those on the ward and some staff at the hospital. They risk being transferred to another room which has absolutely no bed where they will have to spread cloths on the floor until their financial settlements are met.
The Public Relations Officer at the Hospital did not deny the fact that they have patients on the ward who are only being kept there due to their inability to pay for the drugs and the medical services they received. He said, the failure of patients to pay their bills has always been a serious issue the medical center has been confronted with.
In an interview with FrontPageAfrica, Mr. James Crayton said, “It has always been a serious issue that the medical center has been confronted with as it relates to patients not being able to settle their medical bills. It is true that there are patients on the ward who have not been able to settle their medical bills after being discharged.”
However, he said the JFK Hospital has a policy through the social services department where discharged patients who are unable to settle their bills can go and negotiate a discount and a payment plan.
According to him, despite this service, many patients are still not meeting up with their financial obligations which is causing some constraints for the hospital.
“Some of the patients come with nothing at all and the Medical Center is also incurring lots of expenses in purchasing drugs through the minimum fees that is collected; and when you purchase these medical supplies, you will need to collect minimum fees in order to pay the vendors,” he said.
The said the budgetary allotment to the Medical Center is only sufficient for operation expenses like running the generator and taking care of their essentials in order to keep the hospital ongoing.
He maintained that the Medical Center is always available to go into negotiations with patients who have accrued exorbitant fees and are not able to shoulder those fees. He, however, lamented that most of these patients are abandoned by their families in the hospital with no one showing up to take care of the bills.
Crayton also admitted to patients being on the floor but said, those patients have been discharged and have become a liability to the Medical Center and the hospital cannot afford to have them on bed while new patients who need bed are sent back due to lack of bed space. He said, despite their failure to settle their bills, they are being fed by the hospital three times a day.
“This is a referral hospital that a lot of people are being referred to. The beds are no inadequate, they beds are here, but the space is the problem, because of the over crowdedness of the hospital… So, there is no way you’ll be owing the hospital and we keep you on the bed while another patient that is under critical condition that needs to be placed on the bed on the floor,” he said. He said, in 2022, the Hospital lost over L$2 million in medical bills because the patients could not pay.
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