MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Falklands overseas medical arrangements reviewed
Rapidly rising costs of overseas medical treatment have caused the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) and the medical services to come up with new guidelines for patient referral and other measures designed to keep future expenditure within budget.
Councillor Mike Rendell explained to listeners to the Falkland Islands Broadcasting Service on Friday that in 2004/2005 the cost of overseas medical treatment at £750,000 was three hundred and fifty thousand pounds above the budget set. This cost had risen in the last financial year to £1.1 million. Clearly, he said, it would be irresponsible of both the government and the hospital administration to let things carry on in this way.
Councillors and the medical administration had spent six months examining the reasons for the sudden rise in the cost of overseas medical treatment, which included, as well as an unprecedented number of accidents during the last year, a change in demographics as the population gets older, advances in medical technology leading to new treatments and a rise in the public's expectation of what they might legitimately demand from the health service.
The result of these discussions between councillors, doctors and the medical administration is a set of guidelines to be followed in future, which, it is hoped will lead to a reduction in the demands put upon the budget for overseas treatments.
In future, Cllr.Rendell told listeners, overseas referrals would only be allowed free of charge, where there would be "serious detriment to the patients' health" if they weren't referred overseas. In each case, the referral status of the patient would be decided before the event, by all FIG medical officers, as a group.
The same group of medical officers would also be meeting to agree on a set of standards for overseas treatment and this might differ from UK ?best practice'.
As a further cost-cutting measure, Cllr.Rendell continued, all patients being referred overseas for elective medical treatment would face a set charge of £400 towards the cost of that treatment. He reassured those who might require more than one visit overseas for treatment that this charge would be per referral and not per visit. Currently, he stated, the average cost per overseas treatment was around £2,300.
When these new guidelines come into force, emergency and urgent treatment will remain free to the patient, Cllr.Rendell assured. Similarly, the new charge for elective treatment could be waived in the case of patients to whom having to find £400 would represent a severe financial burden.
Apart from the strictly medical guidelines, FIG proposes to set up a working group to examine the possibility of making changes in the present immigration and work permit rules. These currently allow many short-term contract workers the same free access to overseas treatments as that enjoyed by long-term residents and taxpayers. Along with changes of entitlement, other changes suggested include pre-arrival medical examinations for non-entitled workers and placing the onus on the employers of non-entitled short-term workers to provide them with adequate medical insurance.
While the Falkland Islands enjoy a level of medical care, which surpasses that of many much larger communities, circumstances arise from time to time which demand that specialist medical treatment or diagnostic testing should be carried out abroad.
In earlier years, specialist treatment beyond the resources of the local medical team at the King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH) in Stanley was mainly carried out in the UK, with emergency cases sometimes air-lifted to the British Hospital in Montevideo, Uruguay. In recent years, however, for reasons both of cost and immediate availability of treatment, many such patients have been sent to private clinics in Chile, such as the Clinica Magallanes in Punta Arenas or, more frequently, the Clinica Alemana in Santiago.
John Fowler (Mercopress) Stanley
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