SVB asked to pay hospital
NAf. 10.2M for 2008 budget
~ SOAB to audit figures ~
PHILIPSBURG--Although Health Minister Omayra Leeflang has intervened in the long-standing deadlock between St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) and the Social Insurance Bank (SVB) for a new budget agreement, the issue has not yet been resolved completely.
The Minister has asked SVB to pay the hospital NAf. 10.2 million to treat its clients at SMMC in 2008 – 1.1 million guilders less than the amount the hospital had requested and more than the NAf. 8.9 million SVB had said it would be willing to pay.
Leeflang has also asked Foundation Government Accountants SOAB to conduct an audit of the figures proposed by the hospital and will adjust the final figures based on the SOAB report.
SMMC General Director Dr. George Scot said that while he was pleased that the issue was “going in the right direction,” he was not pleased with the amount set, as it was less than the hospital had requested.
Scot, who was informed about the Minister’s decision on November 26, said Leeflang had approved the method of calculation for the budget amounts, but wanted SOAB to perform an audit to verify the figures.
Said Scot: “We are happy that it’s going in the right direction, but we are not satisfied that it has not yet been resolved. NAf. 10.2 million is not enough, because we predicted the figures based on real numbers. It’s not as if we are a spoilt child. It’s just not enough. It will cost us 11.3 million guilders and we don’t know how long we will have to wait on SOAB.”
He said the amount the Minister had set was just an average of the amounts SVB and SMMC had proposed.
Scot said that based on figures the hospital had obtained from SVB, SMMC had received an average eight per cent increase in the number of SVB patients annually over the past three years. He said, though, that SVB was contending that its patient list had increased by less than one per cent. “We made our calculations based on eight per cent,” Scot said.
The hospital and SVB have been at loggerheads for some time and have failed to arrive at a budget agreement for 2008. Leeflang had informed the two parties that if they were unable to reach an agreement by November 1 she would step in and set an amount.
SMMC’s audited financial statement for 2006 shows that the cost to treat SVB clients last year amounted to NAf. 8,845,000; NAf. 745,000 more than the amount stipulated in the budget agreement with former Health Minister Sandra Smith.
