THE finance ministry will terminate all contracts with private medical and health service providers at the end of June.
A notification dated 29 April and issued to all medical service providers by finance permanent secretary Ericah Shafudah states that all existing contracts with the Public Service Employees Medical Aid Scheme (PSEMAS) will be terminated on 30 June 2017.
“As such and in terms of section 12.4 of that existing contract, the ministry is hereby giving 60 days’ notice as from 1 May 2017 until 30 June 2017, instead of 1 April 2017 to 31 May 2017,” the notice letter states.
It says the reviewed contract would be available for signing as from 1 June, with a commencement date of 1 July. The notice comes shortly after The Namibian reported that the finance ministry, which administers PSEMAS, owed doctors, hospitals and pharmacists N$180 million, although it had started paying off this debt.
Following Shafudah’s letter, some doctors have already put up notices at their consulting rooms, informing public servants that they would be paying for medical care out of their own pockets as from 1 July since government has decided to terminate all existing contracts due to a lack of funds.
However, Shafudah yesterday denied that the ministry was terminating contracts because of a lack of funds, saying contract renewals with doctors and other health service providers happened annually.
She said government was putting something else in place with regards to the contracts.
“The renewing of the contracts is nothing new. It is only that this year, we decided to have all the doctors sign their new contracts at the same time because normally they do so at different periods every year,” she explained.
“I have seen the notice claiming that government was terminating all health providers’ contracts because there is no money. There is no truth to such a statement, and I do not know who is circulating it,” she said.
Finance minister Calle Schlettwein on Friday also vehemently denied the contents of the notice, saying the state was only reviewing contracts.
A Windhoek-based private doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that doctors were required to renew their contracts with government every year, but said this time was different because all contracts were affected, and the future looked uncertain with government contracts.
“We were told [by the ministry] that we will only know the outcome of the contract reviews by the end of this month. We do not have any insight as to what the new contracts will contain, or the new conditions that will come with the new agreements,” he said.
The doctor said although government had defaulted on paying service providers between January and April this year, payments had resumed since May, and he was still treating state patients.
Some doctors suspect the move by government to introduce new contracts was to tighten controls following recent reports of medical service providers submitting fraudulent claims to PSEMAS.
The ministry of finance has launched an investigation into claims of fraud involving PSEMAS.
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