Patients Owe Korle-Bu ?200 Million

The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital lost ?200 million last year through patient’s inability to settle their medical bills, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Chief Executive of the hospital, has revealed.

“We had to free them at a great cost since they could not meet the cost and painfully, no relatives came forward to pay the bills”, said Prof. Frimpong-Boateng.

He said these on Friday when he received two cheques totalling ?20,720 million from the Management Board and staff to Gemini Life Insurance Company (GLICO) in his office in Accra. Prof. Frimpong-Boateng admitted that the task ahead of Korle-Bu was very challenging and demanding, but he was happy that the hospital’s current Board of Directors was doing everything possible to turn the tide.

He emphasised that his administration was making serious inroads and had been able to block many wasteful avenues in the hospital’s administrative machinery to save the nation billions of cedis.

Presenting the cheques, the GLICO Board chairman, Mr Grant Kesse, recalled GLICO’s support for the Cardio-thoracic Centre which included the ?20 million life cover policy for Prof. Frimpong-Boateng and assured the centre of GLICO’s continuous assistance to it.

He said that GLICO staff’s contribution of ?720,000 in addition to the company’s ?20 million donation, underlined GLICO’s great concern for, and interest in the centre’s activities.

The Managing Director of GLICO, Mr K. Acheampong Kyei, commended Prof. Frimpong-Boateng for his wonderful performance at the centre.

Receiving the cheques, Prof. Frimpong-Boateng praised GLICO for its support for the centre describing it as “a real friend’. He later conducted the donors round the centre.