Angry doctors' plea to minister to pay huge Road Accident Fund bills

16 Jul 2024

"We implore you to intervene," medical experts who are collectively owed R150-million say to Transport Minister Barbara Creecy.

A group of more than 70 experts from all branches of medicine say they are all owed money for professional services from the Road Accident Fund (RAF) – some for as long as seven years.

They have now written to Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy asking for her urgent intervention in what they say is a “disastrous situation”.

“We implore you to intervene and install a leadership in the RAF which is able to carry out its proper functioning with integrity and honesty… we are hopeless and tired,” they said in a letter to the minister.

The letter to Minister Creecy, dated 12 July, was a follow-up to one written in early June to the previous minister, Sindisiwe Chikunga. There was no response to that.

Since then, dozens more specialists, including surgeons, psychologists and occupational therapists – who are collectively owed more than R150-million – have added their signatures to the document.

But the fund says it owes them nothing.

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“The same people rehash this topic every time there’s a new minister of transport,” said RAF head of corporate communications, McIntosh Polela.

He said the experts had not been appointed by the fund, but “allegedly by its former panel of attorneys”. The service level agreement with the attorneys specifically stated that medical experts could only be engaged upon written authorisation of the fund. And the fund would not be liable for any fees charged without this authorisation.

He said the vast majority of the experts’ unpaid claims had not been authorised by the fund. This was due to the negligence of former panel attorneys.

In the letter to Creecy, clinical psychologist Monique Kok said the expert appointments were legal. And, she said, their reports were being used in court to assist in settling matters.

The fund, she said, was “finding new and cunning ways of explaining and nullifying the expert’s authority to have performed such assessment”.

She said each assessment had been conducted after some form of written instruction, either from the RAF directly or its panel of attorneys.

“The experts have never acted on their own accord and gone out and somehow magically found the current claimants and performed assessments that cost time and resources without instruction from the RAF or their attorneys.”

Refusal to pay

Kok said the fund’s refusal to pay its invoices had had a dire impact, with some going out of business and losing their homes.

In the follow-up letter to Creecy, psychologist Chris Sampson said the experts wanted a meeting with the minister.

“We have diligently served the public for many years by assisting the RAF and the courts in determining appropriate compensation for claimants who were injured in serious motor vehicle accidents.

“It would appear that the organisation’s (and its leader’s) treatment of its own appointed experts gives us the impression that it has been allowed to become a law unto itself, and from court cases it further appears that it refuses to pay claimants, experts or abide by court orders.”

Sampson said the experts conducted “painstaking investigations” and made extensive reports that were being used by the fund, and yet they were waiting seven years later to be paid.

They had paid out of their own pockets the significant costs of translators, transcribers, equipment and testing material.

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“We believe that the state, and specifically your ministry, has a duty to intervene in what has become a well-documented failure, where this statutory body has not carried out its stipulated functions due to either incompetence, poor leadership, arrogance and/or a fundamental evasion of responsibility and fiduciary duties,” he said.

Speaking to GroundUp, Sampson said he personally was owed about R3-million. Payments had become sporadic since about 2017, and after the Covid-19 pandemic, had completely dried up.

“They come up with a multitude of excuses. They claim we didn’t deliver the reports on time. They repeatedly lose invoices. They say the payments are not loaded on their system , and so there must be something wrong but they don’t tell us what’s wrong. They also accuse us of charging above the tariff when they set the tariff.”

Sampson said litigation, for most, was not an option.

“We don’t have deep pockets. And because we have not been paid there is nothing rattling in them. But we cannot throw away seven years of hard slog. We have nothing left to lose and we just hope the new minister has the zeal and energy to finally deal with the problems at the fund.”

Creecy’s office has acknowledged receipt of the two letters, but attempts by GroundUp to get comment were unsuccessful. DM

First published by GroundUp.

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