I AM a pensioner who retired from a government statutory body (University Hospital, now UMMC).
My husband and I have been patients of IJN from 1994. He had an angioplasty done in 1995 and a bypass in 2019. All the follow-ups were done in IJN. My pension card was accepted without any problem since we first went to IJN.
He had a heart attack on March 10 and since his records are in IJN we rushed there. All of a sudden IJN refused to recognise my pension card since it is from a statutory body and told me that IJN is now a privatised hospital. The doctors in IJN did not want to move him after seeing his blood result. They asked me to go to UMMC and get a guarantee letter. I went to UMMC twice but they refused to give me a guarantee letter.
At IJN my husband was told that he needed to do an angiogram urgently but they could not do the procedure until I got a guarantee letter from UMMC or made a hefty deposit of RM30,000.
They kept postponing the procedure till I made a decision. As life is more precious I paid the deposit. As a government pensioner it was difficult to come up with such a large sum of money.
If IJN has been privatised it should have informed all pensioners or made it known in the media.
All of a sudden in an emergency I was put in a tight spot in every way possible.
A 76-year-old pensioner had to shutte from IJN to UMMC from Sunday to Tuesday till I paid the money and then they did the procedure on Wednesday.
New regulations should only apply to newly admitted patients and not to patients whose records are already in IJN.
To treat elderly pensioners like this after their long service for the government and country is unacceptable.
Is IJN a private entity? If government pensioners are not eligible to receive free treatment then we should be formally and publicly informed.
I would also like to know if the government or Pensions Department will reimburse the payment made to IJN.
Disappointed
Petaling Jaya
