The patients speaking
with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) said that they paid for services not
fully rendered to them by some of the dental unit of the hospital.
A dental patient, Mr
Olufemi Ojo, said that the management of the hospital were extorting them.
He said that on the first day he visited the hospital, he
was asked to pay N2,500 for card registration.
“After paying for the card registration, I was asked to pay
another N7, 000 for extraction and cleaning session.
” I was asked to come back on a later date for the
completion of the treatment session because the dentist handling my case told
me that he was tired that day.
“When I got back on
the next date for my appointment for the completion of the cleaning
session, I was told to pay another
N1,875 to access my card.
“I had to pay them for bringing out my card for a job a
member of staff at the dental therapy
unit could not finish the first day due to their fault,” he said.
Another patient, Miss Florence Adesoji, corroborated Ojo’s
claims by saying that the members of
staff of the hospital would first waste the time of patients before they
would start a session they know they
would not be able to complete same day.
She said that the medical personnel in the unit knew quite alright that they
would not be able to complete a
particular session in a day, but would embark on it only to ask the concerned
patient to come back at a later date.
“On the appointed date, you would be asked to pay a fee
before accessing your card without even asking what you came to do.
“I think the appropriate thing is to ask if such a patient
was coming with a new case or for the completion of an old case. I don’t think
it is right to ask patients to pay to
access their cards for completion of treatment that was suspended by the
medical personnel.
“At times, you don’t necessarily have to go through
treatment but to see an expert and get advice. But the new policy of the
hospital management is once you want to access your card, you must pay,” she
said.
The Chief Medical Director (CMD), Prof Chris Bode, in his
response said that there was the need by the public to do a market survey in
other hospitals to compare their charges with
the charges for services rendered
to the public by LUTH.
“You should try and do a market survey at other setups;
private sector and abroad to have a sense of balance before such a critique.
“Do you have any idea of what it takes to set up each dental
unit, a dental chair, materials and equipment used, cost of constant
electricity provided by LUTH, manpower?
“It is after the computation of these that you can form a
fair opinion. I shall await your findings. Nothing good and qualitative comes
free.
“What they pay for are sessions of service. All facilities,
drugs etc used at each session we also paid to procure.
“My crown job took two-days and I had to pay for the
different sessions. You can’t simply deny that all facilities to be used at
subsequent sessions be wished away as free.
“When you are working on biological entities, to do the best
job, the specialist takes as much time as required as no two persons are equal.
No two extractions are the same.
“They do take as much time as each person requires. That
person will pay for service sessions as required,” Bode said. (NAN)
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