By YUKA HONDA/ Staff Writer
September 15, 2022 at 17:42 JST
The Tokyo Metropolitan Hospital Organization’s Hiroo Hospital in the capital’s Shibuya Ward (Hiromi Kumai)
A hospital in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward was stuck with an unpaid 22.3 million yen ($155,000) bill after the death of an uninsured foreign national who had been treated at the hospital for five years.
The metropolitan government in March this year gave up on collecting the debt owed to the Tokyo Metropolitan Hospital Organization’s Hiroo Hospital.
According to the metropolitan government’s welfare and health department, the patient, a male foreign national, started treatment for a kidney disease at the hospital in 2012.
In addition to receiving treatment as an outpatient, he was admitted to the hospital twice, stays that totaled about 20 days. The man died in 2017.
But his next of kin was unknown.
The government saw no prospect of collection and decided to give up on settling the bill, which totaled 22,292,402 yen.
It is unusual for a hospital to be unable to collect unsettled medical fees exceeding 10 million yen, the officials said.
The metropolitan officials said the cost of care totaled so much “because the man did not have any insurance and the period of treatment was long.”
It is not unusual for the metropolitan government to give up on collecting an unpaid medical bill at its hospitals if the statute of limitations under the Civil Code has expired.
In fiscal 2021, which ended in March this year, such unsettled debts at the metropolitan government’s hospitals totaled about 43.7 million yen. About half the amount was the man’s unpaid bill.
Similar cases have occurred every year at the metropolitan government’s hospitals, officials said.
In fiscal 2020, the metropolitan government gave up on collecting about 24.1 million yen in charges owed to metropolitan government hospitals.
Much of the debts were unpaid medical fees. Of the amount, 8.86 million yen, or 37 percent, was owed by foreign nationals.
“There are cases in which low-income foreigners see a doctor at a public health care organization," said a metropolitan health official. "We are making an effort to collect (medical fees) but in some cases they are without insurance and we have accounts due every year.”
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