Facts on CT scans at PoS General

THE EDITOR: I refer to your Editorial in last Sunday Newsday, commenting on the Health Minister’s contribution to debate in the House, on Friday last and captioned “Exploiters in Health Care.” It would seem to us that there should be some sort of obligation on your newspaper to at least check the facts, before rushing into emotional condemnation, at least half of which are just factually wrong. The Minister of Health in his contribution to the budget debate last Friday, made essentially four points on the matter of private CT scans which our company has been providing under contractually agreed terms for over four years now. Two were right, two were wrong.

(1) The contract awarded without tender — just simply wrong; we have the tender documents.
2) That prices we were charging at the CT for Authority patients were and I quote between $1,200-$1,900 — just simply wrong. We have never even charged private patients that amount. For the majority of our contract term we have charged $950 per scan which is about 20 percent less than the public health system has charged at Mount Hope! He correctly noted that our contract offered two free scans per day for poor people (over $2,000 so far) which as a matter of fact is more than any Health Ministry has so far offered its very own patients. How on earth could this be described therefore as health exploitation? You may care to ask the question as to how private enterprise has in fact remained viable, and charged much less than at Mount Hope. Has the Ministry of Health been exploiting the patients at Mount Hope?
3) The next point he raised is correct and a matter of record — the NWRHA contributed $500,000 towards the establishment of the enterprise. Again, there was nothing the least bit furtive about this; since we had indicated this requirement in our initial offer document at the time of open tender, and in recognition of their partnership status.
4) Three mile exclusion zone for Government CT operations. Why would any Company on the planet invest $3.5 million and allow our partner to go into competition with us so close? Would the minister himself — would you? Now it appears the country has arrived at a situation whereby it wants to provide all patients rich or poor, free on demand CT Scans, a situation incidentally which does not occur anywhere else in the world — nowhere! While we may disagree with this policy, we have no problem in accommodating that wish, and have frequently offered successive Ministers of Health such an option which retains the integrity of the contract, and which also incidentally would enable the Ministry to re-imburse us on a “fee for service” basis at a lower cost than the Authority pays for scans currently in the Public Service! That would seem like common sense to us! That way, the Government could achieve its ambitions, and not act legally.

HTI Inc, of Atlanta has absolutely no wish to enter into public controversy/politics of Trinidad — we simply tendered, won the contract and wish to fulfil our responsibilities as defined until end of contract term. No more, no less. We also find it quite amazing that absolutely nobody from the Regional Health Authority or from the Ministry bothered to talk to us, and negotiate a way though, to everyone’s satisfaction, thereby avoiding this unnecessary and reactionary kind of editorial comment. Incidentally, if private participation in health care is so morally reprehensible in this country, then perhaps you could explain, how this same Minister of Health has entered into a similar contract as ours with another foreign company to build and operate a National Oncology Centre, without even the pretense of an open Tender? Or do we really have different rules for different Governments? We really have to learn an awful lot, if we are to realise our country’s ambitions of developed country status.

RODGER VARLEY
Managing Director HTI (Trindad) Ltd