Hoggar clinic denies allegations

THE management of Hoggar Clinic Limited at Akatsi in the Volta Region has denied allegation of malfeasance and professional misconduct in providing services under the National Health Insurance Scheme.
Reacting to claims by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) that it had been sanctioned along with 33 others for professional misconduct, the management of the clinic conceded that it made mistakes but said they were made at the time of the introduction of a new tariff structure.
Addressing a press conference in Accra yesterday, the Medical Director of the Hoggar Clinic, Dr Stephen K. Hoggar, declared that the mistakes were genuine but not peculiar to only the clinic.
The press conference was organised in reaction to media reports in which the NHIA was reported to have sanctioned 34 individuals and service providers under the NHIS in the Volta and Brong Ahafo regions.
The action of the NHIA was part of efforts to ensure the sustenance of the NHIS and Hoggar Clinic was one of the 15 healthcare providers mentioned by the NHIA audit team for alleged professional misconduct and malfeasance.
Dr Hoggar explained that the mistakes which were picked on by the audit team were committed by almost all service providers country-wide because many of the personnel were not familiar with the new tariff structure and, therefore, made mistakes on the claim forms.
Referring to the mistakes, he said it was because of that challenge that in August 2008 a stakeholders’ meeting was organised with the view to educating the service providers on how to handle the new tariff structure.
He pointed out it would have been better if the NHIA audit team had waited for appropriate responses to some of the queries raised, since the Akatsi District Health Insurance Scheme had already identified the problem and communicated to the clinic accordingly.
"Those mistakes were not being made by only Hoggar Clinic Limited, or the Akatsi District for that matter, but throughout the whole country," he stressed.
Dr Hoggar said he could not speak for the other health service providers who were mentioned in the report but what transpired within the Akatsi District was that claims to the scheme's office were always vetted and the findings communicated to the providers for the right thing to be done.
He provided two letters from the Akatsi DHIS office dated December 15, 2008 and March 25, 2009 which talked about mistakes in some of the claims and measures being used to have the correct amount to be paid to the clinic, respectively.
He also expressed surprise that the NHIA audit team made its findings public before communicating them to the management of the clinic, adding that the leader of the team also refused to give him (Dr Hoggar) audience when he wanted to explain himself to the leader on his way from Accra to Akatsi.
The medical director said there was no way he could use his clinic to cheat a scheme he had personally helped to nurture in the district right from the time that the NHIS was introduced.
He said it would have saved both the NHIA and the clinic a lot of problems if the appropriate auditing procedure had been followed, instead of a situation where an institution which had been accused of wrongdoing was allowed to respond.
"They only wrote to us after they had gone public with the findings," Dr Hoggar complained.