“The Uganda Healthcare Federation (UHF), an umbrella body for private healthcare providers, is emphasizing the urgency of establishing an effective strategy to facilitate clients’ payment of their outstanding medical bills without placing undue burden on service providers,” stated Grace Kiwanuka, UHF’s Executive Director, in an interview with URN on Thursday.
Kiwanuka further elaborated, “Several of our members are grappling with millions of unpaid debts from patients due to the absence of a streamlined repayment mechanism.”
The Executive Director’s comments come on the heels of a recent incident where a couple sued Roswell, a women and children’s hospital in Kampala, alleging that their baby had been detained over unpaid maternity bills.
The emotional courtroom scene unfolded on Wednesday as the four-month-old baby was presented, leaving parents Saloome Aturinde and Brigders Rogers Mugenyi unable to definitively confirm their child’s identity, given that the infant had been separated from them at birth.
Kiwanuka emphasized that this controversy is just one of many related incidents that have been occurring behind the scenes as hospitals and patients struggle to reach agreements on accrued medical bills.
She explained, “Private hospitals adopted a policy of requiring patients to make a down payment or a commitment fee upon admission, but this has proven unfeasible for many. Additionally, the strategy of providing daily expense updates to admitted patients has not yielded positive results.”
Roswell, in their latest statement, alluded to this issue, noting that the patient disappeared once they were presented with the medical bill. They stated, “When the baby was discharged on 15th May 2023, Ms. Aturinde was presented with medical bills, and she left the hospital indicating that she would return to clear the medical bills. Unfortunately, both Ms. Aturinde and Mr. Mugenyi did not return to the hospital despite various attempts to contact them.”
However, the couple, through their lawyers led by Christopher Ocom and Geoffrey Turyamusiima, alleged that the hospital had detained the baby and turned the child into a commodity, which they deemed inhuman, cruel, and degrading. They claimed that the hospital even threatened to sell the baby to Sanyu Babies home and prevented the baby’s mother from breastfeeding or providing pumped breast milk to the child.
Notably, complaints about patients being detained in private hospitals due to unpaid bills were not uncommon during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kiwanuka disclosed that UHF had proposed solutions to the government in the past, including initiatives like private-public partnerships and bulk purchases by private healthcare providers, aimed at reducing the overall cost of healthcare. Regrettably, these proposals have yet to be implemented.