Care-cost relief for long-term patients

Families with members in private care centres express delight at Government reversal of the co-payment requirement

ABU DHABI // Hundreds of Emiratis will no longer need to pay thousands of dirhams for the medical treatment of relatives in long-term private care. On Wednesday, Dr Jad Aoun, the chief medical officer of the insurer Daman, issued instructions that healthcare centres were no longer required to bill Emiratis monthly for co- payments amounting to tens of thousands of dirhams if they wanted their loved ones to remain in private long-term care centres. Dr Howard Podolsky, chief executive of Cambridge Medical and Rehabilitation Centre, said that families were ecstatic when told of the waiver.

Wednesday’s Daman circular stated: “Please be informed that effective January 23rd, 2017, the 20 per cent co-payment for Home Health Care and Long Term Care benefits is not applicable. Hence, please refrain from collecting it starting from the above mentioned date.”

Dr Podolsky said patients and families were “thrilled to hear that the Government is supporting them. They are thrilled that this burden and concern has been lifted from them like a huge weight.

“You could see the relief on the faces of the families. You could see the stress just being alleviated.

“This is something that they no longer need to worry about.”

Since the original decision was taken on July 1, patients, their relatives and heads of long-term healthcare centres have complained about the change towards charging and pleaded with authorities for a rethink, The National reported. Long- term health centres also reported financial losses and job cuts as a result of their refusal to discharge patients who could not pay bills that might amount to as much as Dh60,000 a month.

“The past few months, on our end, have been stressful, in the sense that we will never compromise on the quality of care for our patients,” Dr Podolsky said. “But in the background we had to make adjustments on our internal operations to make sure that our cost structure was consistent with the new reimbursement paradigm. “We had to make some changes to make sure that we never missed a beat in providing optimal care to our patients.”

His centre had to lay off more than 10 per cent of its workers as it declined to discharge patients unable to make the co-payment, which resulted in a 20 per cent loss in revenue.

To date, very few patients at all three long-term care centres in the emirate were able to pay. When contacted by The National, Daman and the Health Authority Abu Dhabi both declined to comment.

Salma Al Ghaithi, whose father has been at the Cambridge centre for more than three years after suffering a stroke, said of the decision: “I’m lost for words. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.”

Since July, she had been presented with a monthly invoice of Dh45,000 for her father’s care. “How could I pay? We all live off my father’s pension of around Dh20,000 and there was no way we could pay,” said Ms Al Ghaithi, who is one of nine siblings. Khadeejah Ahmed, whose six- year- old daughter suffers from West syndrome, a genetic disorder that results in severe epilepsy and mental disability, said that since July she and her husband had complained to all the relevant authorities about the co-payment requirement.

With the reversal, she said: “This is a blessing. We were under so much stress because we couldn’t pay, and government hospitals had no beds for my daughter.” Ms Ahmed said she knew “in her gut” that the Government would reconsider its decision. “They wouldn’t do this to us.”

Dr Podolsky said of the reversal that the authorities “realised, as patients came to them and we discussed with them over and over during the past six and a half months, that there is a law of unintended consequences – that they were stressing and hurting people that they didn’t intend to hurt”. Nada Al Ansari, whose 18-month-old son Ali is also at the Cambridge centre, said: “It didn’t make sense.”

She said it was impossible for her son, who was born with a genetic disorder and is unable to eat or breathe independently, to leave the centre. “We panicked at first and it was difficult for us to face this reality that we had to pay Dh10,000 each month,” Mrs Al Ansari said.

Now that the co-payment requirement had been rescinded, she said: “We are all so happy for this decision. Everyone is smiling and happy for the first time in months”.