Dead man paying – and heading for the blacklist

A FAMILY member recently passed away at the Life Empangeni Garden Clinic after a short but serious illness.

The deceased lived alone in Durban and having just been in a Durban hospital, we thought it prudent to bring her to our home in Empangeni to convalesce.

This was short-lived as she deteriorated quickly and had to be again be admitted to hospital here in Empangeni.

Well, imagine our surprise receiving an account addressed to the deceased for an amount of some R300.

Did they not comprehend that she had actually died in their hospital?

When I called them to remind them of this their attitude was something to believe. The account was already overdue and they threatened handing over to their legal department for collection.

Apparently their system makes no allowance for this situation and any and all overdue accounts are handled in this way.

The fact that I had called them to assist them in their ‘collections’ was of no consequence as they were not interested that the deceased would have no way of paying the account, and in fact even attempted to get payment out of me.

I pointed out that I wasn’t responsible for the account.

So, my dead family member is now blacklisted and will never again be able to obtain credit, buy a cellphone or perhaps a fridge at a local furniture store and definitely will not obtain a credit card. She’ll have to use our good name to do all of that.

So, the moral of the story is don’t go near the Life Empangeni Garden Clinic if there’s the remotest chance of dying.

BRIAN PITCHER

Response from Judy van Zyl, Hospital Manager

We have investigated the complaint and wish to respond as follows:

Mr Pitcher was contacted by the Private Credit Controller who was following the procedure for outstanding accounts. However, she failed to discuss the circumstances of this particular case with her manager prior to contacting Mr Pitcher. Had she done this, the amount outstanding would have been written off as a deceased account.

We sincerely regret the distress caused to the family and will take the appropriate measures to ensure that this does not reoccur. I have apologised to Mr Pitcher.

The hospital has a robust complaint system in place for clients to report any problems that they may experience telephonically or by email and we encourage the patients to give feedback as we remain committed to improve our service where gaps occur. Our priority remains providing quality care to our patients and this extends to their families.