The Health Insurance Organisation has fined a private hospital €30,000 after it repeatedly failed to submit compensation claims on time, forcing HIO to process the paperwork itself.
The hospital has missed the 45-day deadline for entering claims so many times that HIO had to step in and do the work, according to HIO director Constantinos Panayides.
The delays also corrupt patient records, leaving gaps in medical histories that other healthcare providers rely on.
HIO’s software gives providers 45 days after a patient’s discharge to enter compensation claims. After that, the system locks providers out. When hospitals miss the deadline, HIO must manually enter the data so it can process payments, Panayides told Phileleftheros.
But the late entries mean patient profiles aren’t updated properly in the system, creating holes in the information available to other providers.
The hospital violated regulations that apply to all providers and dumped work on HIO that hospitals should handle themselves, Panayides said.
HIO has fined providers before for late claim submissions, though previous penalties may not have been this large, he said.