HMO Refunds Hospital Bill Of Yabatech Staff After Healthwise Report

A Health Maintenance Organisation, Princeton Health Limited has refunded the hospital bill of a staff of the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos State, Mrs. Folasade Idowu, who personally financed her treatment despite having enrolled on a health insurance scheme.
This development is coming after a report by The Tide’s source Healthwise detailed how employees of the Yaba College of Technology, a Federal Government institution are allegedly being ill-treated and denied access to basic healthcare services by an HMO licensed by the National Health Insurance Authority to provide such to them.
The report with the headline, ‘HMO denies FG employees access to healthcare, despite full enrollment, salary deduction’
Speaking with our correspondent, Idowu said the HMO reached out to her after the report, promising to refund part of the money she spent on her treatment.
The woman said some days after, she got an alert of N49,260 and a 50 per cent refund of the money spent on carrying out a magnetic resonance imaging scan.
A text sent to our correspondent by Idowu read, “Good morning Mr Sodiq, thank you very much for bailing me out from Princeton (NHIS), in fact, the report on The Tide newspaper is really helpful.
“Immediately they saw the report in the newspaper, Princeton started calling me that they wanted to refund me.
‘After the report, I also reported the case to my union and they took it up with our management through to the NHIS, but because the case was in the newspaper, it made it easy for me to get my refund of 50 per cent of the MRI.
“But I would like if the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) could be more reformed for easy accessible for people, and not play with people’s lives when they are in need of their Health provider.”
It was reported that Idowu endured excruciating pain in one of her legs for more than two months and decided to visit the hospital for medical evaluation.
Ordinarily, being a FG worker and NHIA enrollee, registered under Princeton Health Limited, she is meant to access quality medical care.
She explained that a certain amount of money, called capitation, is deducted from her salary monthly for medical purposes, whether she goes to the hospital for treatment or not.
But sadly, when she needed to access health care, The Tide’s source Healthwise reported that the woman was denied the right and left with no option but to personally finance her treatment.
She recalled visiting the Military Hospital in Yaba, Lagos State, to treat a lingering pain in her leg, which almost made it impossible for her to walk.
At the hospital, she was sent to a clinic in Ebutte-Meta, to carry out a magnetic resonance imaging scan and was given a referral code by an NHIA staff at the military health facility.
She, however, said the clinic rejected the referral code, claiming that the HMO owed them backlogs of treatment.
Idowu said several attempts to get the scan done, which included putting calls across to the HMO, failed and she had to pay for the test.
“One of the nurses at the clinic told me they can’t attend to enrollees under Princeton HMO and referred to them as debtors. I called the HMO but was told by a staff that they don’t know why the clinic refused to attend to me. Meanwhile, it was the HMO that generated the referral code given to me at the military hospital.