A patient on Government's Health Insurance Plan (HIP) will be reimbursed for her almost $4,000 surgery bill after The Royal Gazette contacted the Ministry of Health on her behalf.

Irma Dill had to undergo surgery and two follow-up doctor's appointments last February for the varicose veins in her leg.

The painful veins came from standing for hours on end as a maid at the Southampton Princess for 22 years.

Because she is now self-employed, Mrs. Dill pays $202.28 each month for HIP and last year she also paid $3,433 for the surgery and $208 and $344 for each of the two appointments a total of $3,975 because she was told her insurance would reimburse her.

However, almost a year later, Mrs. Dill came to The Royal Gazette because she had yet to see any of the money owed her, even after continually contacting her case manager.

She said: "We pay HIP faithfully every month. All the working class people will pay for it. I'm annoyed because I've got insurance, but I get nothing from it.

"The surgery worked wonders but I couldn't afford to do it again because (it is) a year later and I hear 'I am working on it.'"

However, after this newspaper contacted the Ministry of Health, Mrs. Dill said her case manager called her to say she would receive a cheque for $1,900 toward the treatment in two weeks.

Permanent Secretary of Health Warren Jones said he was sorry about her case and reiterated the Ministry's ongoing efforts to improve HIP payments.

He said: "Although much progress is being made, we do anticipate as we continue towards full update of procedures that we will have persons who will fall through the cracks.

"Ms. Dill is clearly one who has and we are working to resolve that as we speak. I apologise for her situation and she can anticipate hearing from the Department of Social Insurance regarding her reimbursement."

Last year the Ministry of Health acknowledged that there was a HIP backlog that was creating huge delays in reimbursing physicians and personal claims like Mrs. Dill's.

Mr. Jones had said, last month, that more staff had been hired, but it would take automation of the plan to make payments within a month.

That goal has been achieved for BHB claims and according to answers to questions from this newspaper last month, automation was still being worked on.

"Resources were devoted to this (reducing BHB claims) effort, but simultaneously, the Department continued to work on the outstanding personal, physician/laboratory and pharmacist claims, but the primary focus was the largest volume claims from them as well," said Mr. Jones,

"In May I reported that we intended to be automated by the end of the year. In actual fact we partly achieved that goal. To assist the process of claims payment and recognising the time it will take to get a vendor in, develop the system and implement it, DOSI went with an off the shelf systems (Spyglass) as an interim solution."

And yesterday, he said the number of personal claims, such as Mrs. Dill's, stood at a total of 117, 57 of which have been processed since September 2007, 13 unprocessed from between December, 2007 and January 2008, 17 pending claims and 30 claims with insufficient information.

Yesterday Mr. Jones added: "We anticipate that as we go through the process of getting up to date, there will be others who might be out there who we have not as yet captured.

"This is a part of the process and we intend to deal with any omissions as we come upon them. Ultimately, we have made significant process and return times have improved."