21.36 Trillion Payments For COVID-19 Service Claims Hanging, Moeldoko Asks To Be Completed

JAKARTA - Presidential Chief of Staff (KSP) Moeldoko said there were IDR 21.36 trillion hospital claims (RS) for COVID-19 services hanging. He asked for this to be resolved immediately.

Moeldoko said, this year the target for paying hospital claims for COVID-19 services is IDR 25 trillion. Of this amount, only IDR 3.64 trillion has been reviewed by the Financial and Development Supervisory Agency (BPKP), and is ready to be paid.

"There is still a wide gap that we need to pursue, which is IDR 21.36 trillion. This payment must be completed immediately so that hospitals can more optimally handle COVID-19 cases. The President is very concerned about this (paying COVID-19 claims)," said Moeldoko while chairing the Coordination Meeting for the Acceleration of COVID-19 Claim Payments with the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance, BPJS, and a number of other ministries/institutions, at the Bina Graha Building, Jakarta, Friday March 25th.

In the coordination meeting, Moeldoko emphasized that to speed up payment of COVID-19 claims, the government through the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) will cut the claim process business through policy updates.

"So that there is certainty that my claim will be paid so much," he said, as quoted by Antara.

In addition, he explained, technically the government will also integrate e-claims at the Ministry of Health with v-claims at BPJS, to minimize the occurrence of expired claims and claim disputes or disagreements between BPJS and hospitals or health facilities on service claims.

"This is to determine whether the claim really becomes inappropriate or expires due to delays from the hospital or other factors," he explained.

On this occasion, the Director of Referral Health Services at the Ministry of Health, Dr. Siti Khalimah, emphasized the importance of hospitals having a special team dedicated to handling COVID-19 claims. This needs to be done so that the process of reconciling claims between the hospital and the Ministry of Health can be faster, and the minutes of reconciliation can be issued immediately.

"We (Ministry of Health) are ready to improve communication with hospitals, and ensure that the policies we make do not burden hospitals," said Khalimah.

For information, the government has made payments for COVID-19 claims of Rp. 35.11 trillion in 2020. However, there are indeed several claims worth Rp. 5.50 trillion which were declared unfit/appropriate and expired so that they could not be paid.

Meanwhile, in 2021, the COVID-19 claims that have been paid amounted to Rp. 62.68 trillion. And this year, the government is targeting payment of COVID-19 claims of IDR 25 trillion.