Hospital takes health minister
to court to settle budget issues
- Minister tells SVB, SMMC to agree on 2008 Budget by Nov 1 ~
PHILIPSBURG--St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) is taking Health Minister Omayra Leeflang to court in its bid to put an end to the long-standing dispute over how much the Social Insurance Bank (SVB) owes it for treating SVB clients for the years 2004 and 2005.
The hospital filed its court case on March 9 and the hearing has been set for Tuesday, September 25 in the Court of First Instance. The hospital will be represented by Lexwell Attorneys at Law.
In the meantime, Leeflang has ordered the hospital and SVB to work out a new budget arrangement for 2008 by Thursday, November 1. Should they fail to reach agreement, she will intervene in the same manner former Health Minister Sandra Smith had done during her tenure, and set an amount.
SMMC General Director Dr. George Scot said it was imperative that the budget agreement for the years 2004 and 2005 be settled once and for all. Budget amounts for these two years have been a hotly disputed issue involving the hospital, SVB and former health ministers for quite sometime already. While SVB and former health ministers have contended that the books for these two years have already been closed, the hospital has maintained its position that the issues are still alive.
Scot said the medical center had only agreed on budget amounts for 2006 and 2007, under the condition that certain Government and SVB related issues such as payments to SMMC by the governments of Saba, Statia and Curaçao and the budget arrangement for the years 2004 and 2005 be addressed.
Scot said that based on the hospital’s calculations, SVB had owed it NAf. 15.9 million for treatment of SVB clients over the years 2004 and 2005 but had paid NAf. 11.4 million of said amount, thereby leaving an outstanding amount of NAf 4.5 million – the amount SMMC is pursuing in court.
Scot said the hospital needed this money to pay off outstanding debts to SVB. He acknowledged that the hospital owed the insurance service provider NAf. 3.2 million in outstanding premiums and NAf. 700,000 for outstanding ABVZ debts.
“When we win this court case,” Scot said Monday, the hospital would like to enter into an arrangement with SVB to trade off its debts.
“The court case is against the minister because, according to SVB and the Minister, the amounts for 2004 and 2005 are paid according to the budget agreement but we never had a budget agreement (for these years),” Scot explained.
He continued: “It’s important that we win this case because we have an outstanding premium debt to SVB from before 2003 that we would like to settle.
We acknowledge that we have unpaid premiums (for SVB) dating back to before 2003 and we would like to pay this amount but it’s only fair that we are also paid for treating their patients. The moment we win this case we want to settle the debt,” he said.
In the meantime, referring to Leeflang’s order that SVB and SMMC should reach a consensus for a budget agreement for next year, or she would step in and set an amount, the SMMC Director said the hospital would only accept a “realistic” budget amount based on the actual projected cost to treat SVB patients.
He said the two parties had had initial discussions last week Friday and “it was a very amicable and positive meeting.”
“We have to establish which cost needs to be covered and the budget should cover the cost and not what happened in the past where the amount is insufficient or we won’t accept the agreement. If we predict that the cost to treat SVB clients in 2008 will be NAf. 11 million and there is a budget of NAf. 10 million, it means that treatment will have to be cut.
“It can’t be expected that SMMC gives treatment and not be paid accordingly. That’s what happened in the past,” Scot explained.
SMMC has not yet signed the budget agreements for 2006 and 2007 because of a dispute over the payment of NAf. 600,000 from SVB. The parties can’t agree whether the payment of the latter amount falls under 2005 or 2006.
