The American Samoa Medicaid Office is having to discontinue escorts for patients that are referred to New Zealand except in certain cases.
The reason is because of incidents involving patient escorts and some patients which may put the New Zealand referral program in jeopardy.
Director of the American Samoa Medicaid Office, Sandra King Young, explains that accommodations in New Zealand are being damaged, escorts are using the transportation services for inappropriate travel, hotel property is missing, and some escorts themselves are so sick with their own medical conditions that they end up being patients too.
“One escort ran away and it was stressful to track that person down to return them home, ” King Young said.
She added there are other numerous infractions that she will not disclose because its embarrassing.
The Medicaid Director tells of the work that went into securing an alternative referral program for American Samoa patients after Hawaii hospitals stopped accepting local referrals.
Their research found that the main factor was cost– the failure to pay our bills in Hawaii badly damaged our credit in Hawaii so that hospital providers there would not accept local patients anymore unless ASG put up a $10 million escrow account for them to draw from while our government replenishes the fund.
In looking for an alternative provider for patients needing treatment not available locally, King Young said, “NZ was willing to take a chance on our government and Medicaid, so long as we pay our bills on time.”
She said maintaining that credibility in NZ also means that we take care of everything else that is attendant with our program.
“Our job as the administrator of the program is to do everything we can to protect our program for all the eligible beneficiaries on island, and to minimize the risk we are exposed to in all areas.
“If we fail in that responsibility then we lose our program in NZ,” said King Young.
One of the director’s key objectives, is to protect the NZ program so that our people have a place to be referred to for medical care.
Under the NZ referral program Medicaid pays for air and ground transportation as well as accommodations for the patient and escort and 100%’of the patient’s medical bill.
The only thing that the patient and escort pays is their food.
But according to the director, patients and escorts have demanded that their NZ vendors pay for their food “because they are starving, and threatening vendors that if something happens to them because of starvation, it’s on the program,.”
“Yet, they were clearly informed that they have to pay for their food while in NZ,” the Director lamented.
“Our people need to understand, that going to NZ– it is not an entitlement. NZ has given us the privilege to come to their country to receive their high quality health care.
“We are guests there and we need to act as respectful and caring people–including being mindful of the properties we use as accommodations. If NZ decides to stop accepting our people for medical care because of misconduct of some people, that damages this program for all our people, we will have no where else to go where we can use our Medicaid funds,” explained King Young.
Beginning Oct 1st, Medicaid American Samoa is only allowing escorts for minor children and medically necessary for the elderly, physically or mentally impaired.
Escorts will have to obtain court and medical clearance and patients and escorts must have a valid credit card for accommodations.
Escorts must be 21 years old and not older than 65. No children are allowed to to travel with a patient and escort.
Also the Medicaid American Samoa Office will no longer be lodging visas for non-resident escorts–they must do that themselves because Medicaid is not allowed to pay for the visas.
