Evening star., 1945-05-20
Clinical Fees
10 Be Imposed
AT Ga||inger
Commissioners Plan
Charge for Service
Now Provided Free
BY BAINBRIDGE CRIsT.

BY BAINBRIDGE CRIST.
Steps to provide fees for clinical
service supplied now free at Gal
linger Municipal Hospital, and to
tighten and improve control over
collection of payments from nom
INDECENT patients, were announced
yesterday by District officials.
Budget Officer Walter L. Fowler
said efforts will be made to have a
provision in the 1916 appropriation
act making it impossible for Gal
Hnger to give free clinical services,
drugs, pharmaceutical preparations
or x-rays to nonindigent persons,
except in emergency cases or in the
diagnoses of tuberculosis.
The provision would be so worded
that no part of the Gallinger ap-
preparation could be used to provide
such service to nonindigent and
nonemergency cases except at rates
set by the Commissioners. Mr..
Fowler said there have been cases
of persons willing and able to pay,
but unable to do so because no scale
was established.
DR.. Seckinger Outlines Plan.
Meanwhile DR.. Daniel L. Seckin-
ger, acting superintendent of the
hospital, released an eight-page
report giving an outline of steps
taken to improve collections from
paying patients and setting forth
cases where fees will be charged
for service that is now free.
1t took up in detail the March re-
port of Auditor Arthur r. Pilker-
ton. who presented a seven-p point
program for improvement of collec-
tions and claimed that during a
year and quarter period only S75,-
154 had been collected out of S291 ,435
that should have been obtained.
DR.. Seckinger said that a. scale of
fees was being worked out to cover
those persons receiving out-patient
treatment. with such services as
X-rays, dressing of minor injuries
and setting of fractured bones. Ap-
proximately $50 prescriptions are
filled daily without charge.
Additional Charges.
In regard to the claim that there
were instances where pay-patients
were not charged for delivery room,
operation room or infant care serv-
ice, DR.. Seckinger said that a plan
would be submitted to the Commits
sioners calling for additional
charges for the delivery room and
the infant care or the operation
room" to those who can pay. Some
are said to be able to pay only "a a
day and not for additional charges
At conference of health officials,
the superintendent said it was
brought out that charges for opera
ton rooms, minor and major sur
gerry, applied only to persons already
admitted through the Hospital Ad-
mittance Service as full-pay patients
and not to emergency cases brought
to theaemergency room. A scale of
pay for, this latter group also is
being worked out and will be pre-
serited to the Commissioners.
Referring to Mr.. Pilkerton's claim
that records Of discharged paw pa
tlents are not furnished promptly
to the business Office, DR.. Seckinger
said "a system has now been set
up at the hospital whereby patients,
before discharge from the hospital,
must have an approved discharge
and, in addition, before their
clothes or other belongings are given
10 them, they must clear with the
business office any matter of finan-
clal obligation or contract which
might have been made"
Flexible Scale of Pay.
In line with the auditors sugges-
ton that patients be billed every
two weeks, DR.. Seckinger reported
that an employe had been assigned
TO Keep accounts current and that
a request had been made in the
l946 budget for the Hospital Permit
Bureau to establish an office at the
hospital. In addition, steps also
are being worked out to make the
scale of pay more flexible" as rec.
commended by Mr.. Pilkerton.
Other recommendations being
carried out are that cancellation
OF accounts be made only upon
the approval of the commissioners
acting on the recommendation of
the special financial unit of the
Collector of Taxes Office, and that
a numerical file of accounts be
established. Steps taken by Doug
las N. West, head of the permit
bureau, which investigates the
financial status of patients, to check
on patients at Glenn Dale SAM
torium and Upshur Street Hospital
who are financially delinquent,
were announced a month ago,