Chairman of the National Insurance Property Development Company Ltd (Nipdec) Michael Toney has given the assurance that millions owed to 290 pharmacies for services rendered under the Chronic Disease Assistance Programme (CDAP) will be paid.
But he said the problem was not a lack of funds but rather the process by which the monies were generated. Toney made the statements in response to a story in the Sunday Guardian in which president of the Pharmacy Board of T&T Andrew Rahaman made the claim of non-payment.
Rahaman had said the pharmacies had been awaiting payments for the past eight months and had also threatened to withhold services to thousands of CDAP patients until they were paid.
Toney said on an i95 call-in show yesterday that the matter was first brought to his attention, and that of management, around 3.30 pm last Friday. He said with the change in Government last year, a new board was appointed in January this year. Describing it as a two-fold issue, Toney added: “There is the period from July to October and there is the period from November to date.
“My information is that the funds to pay the pharmacists were received around the end of last month by Nipdec from the ministry of health and we are processing those cheques.” He said when claims were sent in from pharmacists these were in the form of copies of CDAP prescriptions.
“That claim has to be translated into dollars before the quantum can be ascertained. We outsourced the programme that has to deal with the conversion from the claim form to the dollar amount and there has been some problems with the service provider. But on Friday we were able to get the conversion we needed to take this quantum of money, submit it to the ministry of health so that we could get the money to pay the pharmacists,” Toney said.
He did not identify the provider but said the person was local.
On the time frame when this was expected to be sorted out, he said this was difficult to say but it was a matter which was being urgently addressed as officials had also been working over the weekend.
Saying that he was concerned regarding the current process, Toney said what was needed to be done in Nipdec was to get a firm grasp of all the various projects and an understanding of them.
“If it is that Nipdec is spread too thin what we have to do is fix Nipdec so we can generate an efficient and effective service for the ministry.
“I empathise with the situation that the pharmacists are in but, I want to give them the assurance that we are going to be working assiduously to correct that situation and to make sure it does not happen again. As far as I know the problem is not the lack of funds, because these funds would have been allocated in the budget,” Toney said. He added the ministry has been “very timely” in providing the necessary monies.
Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, who had also been contacted by the Sunday Guardian, had promised to get to the bottom of the issue. In the article, Deyalsingh had complained that Rahaman “just runs to the media for every little thing.” Regarding this, Toney said he did not know Rahaman therefore could not comment.