CEO of the BVIHSA Mrs Darlene A. Carty-Baptiste said, “we really need to be mindful that as we transition from the facility that we’re in now – it’s a new hospital – and to improve our services it takes money and healthcare is not inexpensive… it’s very expensive and we need to keep track with our expenditure.” Photo:VINO

Regarding the Request for Proposals (RFP) sent out in 2012, Mrs Carty-Baptiste said, “we’ve selected a vendor and once he’s aboard we’re going to go ahead and solidify that contract with the awardee.”

According to the CEO, there will only be one external contract extended at this time but there will also be internal measures to beef up debt collection within the Authority. “… internally we’re going to have a Senior Billing Officer and a Billing Specialist on staff,” the CEO related.

In an exclusive interview with this news site, Mrs Carty-Baptiste re-iterated that the Authority will continue to encourage persons to come into the organisation to honour their outstanding payments to the Authority in meeting their obligations.

Mrs Carty-Baptiste added, “we really need to be mindful that as we transition from the facility that we’re in now – it’s a new hospital – and to improve our services it takes money and healthcare is not inexpensive… it’s very expensive and we need to keep track with our expenditure.”

The CEO further stated that the organisation would like to encourage persons to be cognisant of the costs associated with health care and meet their obligations at the BVIHSA.  It was announced at a community meeting in East End in November 2012 that the Authority was owed at least $28M in oustanding debts by persons who had used its services.

The improvement of service quality across all spectrum was cited as the most important thing for the Authority at the moment, “We’re doing better overall”, the CEO said, “we’ve transitioned out of the assessment phase and looking at some of the corrective actions and [also] looking at expanding our services and the most important thing is addressing quality across all spectrum of the BVIHSA...”

Mrs Carty-Baptiste was hopeful that the organisation could ultimately become more responsive to persons concerns and felt that there were improvements despite the shortcomings that existed. “I know that we’re not quite there yet but at least folks give us the opportunity to know that we’re trying our best to make things better than where we were this time last year,” she added.