Chairman of the BVIHSA, John I. Cline, indicated that he was encouraged that the Authority will continue to make a 'dent' in arrears owed by patients. Photo:VINO/File

CEO of the BVIHSA, Mrs Darlene A. Carty-Baptiste, refuted suggestions that the Authority was dependant on the media to roll out its marketing and communication strategy for CELLMA. Photo:VINO

Chairman of the BVIHSA, Mr John I. Cline. Photo:VINO/File

“We have made some progress in doing so internally,” Mr Cline stated, “we have explored the possibility of hiring outside contractors who can help us… like collection agencies and other firms who have expressed interest in helping us to collect the money.”

The Chairman declared that the organisation is encouraged that it will continue to make ‘a dent’ in the arrears that are owed to the Authority and felt things were improving, especially with the new system being introduced.

Going forward with the new system, he noted, this offered the prospect of timely billing in addition to timely collections of patient revenue.

Previously, CEO of the BVIHSA Mrs Darlene Carty-Baptiste, had announced at a Community meeting held in East End/Long Look in November 2012, that the organisation was owed approximately $28M in arrears, the majority of which came from unpaid account balances.

The BVIHSA had at the time also discussed the option of exploring legal avenues of retrieving revenue that was owed to the organisation.

While disclosing the pending implementation of a new fee structure, among a host of other initiatives in store from the Authority, Mr Cline had revealed there were discussions held at the board level to have a payment plan system implemented for persons that have defaulted in payment of their accounts.

He added, “it will come to a point, if people are not responsive to our effort, then we will have to resort to legal means.”

Meanwhile, CEO of the BVIHSA, Mrs Darlene A. Carty-Baptiste, was insistent that there are strategic plans in the works on how patients will be publicly informed about new developments taking place within the organisation – separately from media reports being done.

The CEO refuted suggestions that the organisation would be dependent on the media to roll out its public awareness strategy and noted that this was an ‘information sharing opportunity’ for the media to partner with the organisation in getting messages about its new services out to the public at large. “This journey begins with all those persons in the room, including yourselves, to get the message out,” the CEO told media practitioners at its recently held press conference to introduce its new CELLMA Health Information System.

“We’re not waiting until full implementation [of the system] to go out and tell [patients] this is what we’re going to do now… this is actually a rolling opportunity for us to communicate with our public and with our internal customers on an ongoing basis,” Mrs Carty-Baptiste added, “communication is key.”