Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB) chairman Jonathan Brewin yesterday tried to clarify the $1.1 million wrote-off in unpaid bills in the last financial year.

Auditor General Larry Dennis revealed the figure in his annual report for 2001-2002 which he said was due to "serious and pervasive accounting and financial management problems".

Mr. Brewin said yesterday that throughout the year, BHB made every attempt to get uninsured patients who had gone into King Edward VII Memorial Hospital or St. Brendan's to pay for their service.

These patients are mostly unemployed persons who consistently refuse to be registered under the Government indigent subsidy programme, and it was something Mr. Dennis recognised as a national social cost.

Under Canadian accounting rules, this was deemed 'uncollectable' and must be 'written off' on the balance sheet.

But after the money is noted as a 'write off', it is passed to the BHB's external debt collectors.

"The debt collectors vigorously pursue collection until a bad debt is paid by a delinquent patient; collection is remitted to the BHB on a monthly basis," said Mr. Brewin.

"In some cases we establish a payment plan with a delinquent patient and the money is recuperated over the long term. So in fact we do collect a portion of the 'write off' figure.

"In recent years, for example, we have been able to collect over $500,000 per year relating to debt over the past several years."

Mr. Brewin said a 3.5 percent write off would be considered acceptable for a hospital and BHB's figure of $1.1 million for 2001-2 represents one percent of total revenue and therefore below industry standards.

"We recognise that we still have some way to go to improve our fiscal position," added Mr. Brewin.

"However, as you may know, the BHB has a policy not to turn anyone away for medical treatment, regardless of his or her insurance coverage. With this type of mandate we think our 'write off' figure is particularly low."

Since April 2002, BHB has introduced a number of initiatives such as an increase in the number of collection clerks, regular review of patient ledger accounts by departmental managers and education of KEMH service departments regarding the policy of referring uninsured patients to credit clerk before service is provided.

"We would like to encourage those people who are unemployed to sign up for the government indigent subsidy programme which will enable us to have their hospital stay paid for by the Government," continued Mr. Brewin.

"We will also continue to review our internal processes to further improve our collection success."