St John 111 to Baycorp over debts

By BRIDGET CARTER

The debt-ridden St John service is widening a debt collection service to reclaim unpaid fees for trips in its ambulances.

A quarter of all people who call an ambulance for a medical emergency fail to pay the compulsory part-charge of $30 to $70.

Bad debtors add $1.2 million to the service's $9 million deficit each year.

The ambulance service asked the Government for a further $8 million but the Ministry of Health told it it did not have a strong enough case.

The ministry offered an extra $2 million on top of the $29 million the Government already gives it.

Financial difficulties have led St John to announce that 23 staff in the central region - south of Taupo to Wellington - will be laid off early next year.

St John chief executive Jaimes Wood said the public would still be looked after in an emergency because the region had 23 surplus staff from an accident compensation pilot project that was no longer funded.

National Party associate health spokeswoman Judith Collins said the Government should front up with the extra $8 million. She said the St John Ambulance was an essential service.

If it did not do the job, a Government agency would have to be created, which would cost much more than $8 million.

"If anyone deserves the money from Government, people like them do," Judith Collins said.

Finance Minister Michael Cullen said yesterday that the Government would expect St John to chase up any bad debts.

"I'm surprised the National Party would expect the Government to pick up someone else's bad debts."

A Ministry of Health deputy director-general, Gordon Davies, said health funding was scarce and had to be prioritised.

The service has been meeting losses over several years with revenue from other St John services and donations.

St John employs 600 salaried ambulance officers nationwide and has a further 2000 trained volunteers.

Each ambulance ride costs $400 on average and medical caseloads are increasing by more than 5 per cent a year.

St John human resources director Tom Dodd said the ambulance service was about to start using the Baycorp debt collection agency to collect unpaid fees in the central region.

Baycorp already collects debts in the northern region, which covers Northland and Auckland, and in other areas of New Zealand.

Mr Dodd said St John did not want to raise charges for patients because it did not think it was socially responsible to do so.

In the northern region alone, the service is losing $1 million a year.

In the Palmerston North and Hawkes Bay areas, just under half of medical emergency patients do not pay their ambulance fees.

New Zealand Medical Association chairman John Adams said debt collectors could put people off calling an ambulance but St John needed to recover the money to run its service.

Marketing and communications director Evan Gordon said St John felt comfortable using Baycorp because those who did not pay were "free riding" on those who did.

But people with outstanding debts would not be denied an ambulance.

In Australia, people pay up to $700 to call an ambulance. In Britain, the service is free.