Sick asked for cash on the spot

By ANDREW LAXON

An Auckland medical specialist is asking his Southern Cross patients to pay fees of about $500 on the spot because the insurance company now owes him more than $50,000.

The specialist - who did not want to be named because of the possible impact on his business - told the Herald that Southern Cross had fallen three months behind on its payments.

Until a few weeks ago it owed $87,000 to three private medical businesses which he ran with his wife.

The company was starting to catch up, but it still owed $57,000 to one diagnostic imaging business alone.

"Last week when I looked at it, I thought, 'My God, we just have to start charging patients'.

"If there's any way the patient can afford to pay up front we say, 'Look, Southern Cross isn't paying their bills at the moment. Would you mind putting it on your credit card because you won't have to pay that for a month anyway?"'

The specialist said about 40 of the 50 patients who came for a scan each week were covered by Southern Cross.

Three-quarters of those patients asked were willing to pay the $400 to $500 fee, in the hope that Southern Cross caught up with its payments before they received their credit card bill.

"We've been doing it in a nice way.

"I think most people really feel a bit sorry for specialists who aren't getting paid for a long time and feel really bad that they've incurred a debt."

The specialist said he was also angry that Southern Cross was paying its own hospitals and its affiliated providers - hospitals and specialists with pre-agreed fixed price contracts - within days.

"We feel we're at the bottom of the heap getting paid because all these other people get priority on us and we're powerless to do anything about it."

Southern Cross owes about $25 million to its customers - who in turn owe the money to specialists and private hospitals - after a badly run changeover to a new computer system created a backlog of 50,000 claims.

Chief executive Roger Bowie originally told policyholders that he expected the problem would be solved by the end of this month.

However, last week he pushed this deadline back to the end of next month.

Mr Bowie has admitted the company had failed to provide enough staff and training for the new computer system.

However, he has rejected claims by customers, former staff and competitors that making most of the company's claims staff redundant by moving the department from Auckland to Hamilton in the middle of the changeover contributed to the problem.

Yesterday the company took out a full-page advertisement in the Herald apologising again to customers and promising to pay millions of dollars from next week as it cleared the backlog.

nzherald.co.nz/southerncross