Sun.Star: Cebu hospital lost P100m to graft, COA says

The Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) lost at least P100 million to graft last year alone, according to a Commission on Audit (COA) report. Sun.Star Cebu reported Tuesday that a chunk of the loss involved income from the hospital's laboratory operations. It said other graft-ridden areas involved purchases like ready-made bed sheets, which hospital seamstress and utility workers could have made at over half the price, and the procurement of other medical equipment. The "confidential" COA report, dated Feb. 21 this year, also recommended that VSMMC chief Dr Gerardo Aquino Jr to investigate his own personnel over the alleged anomalies. If necessary, then it also recommended that he get assistance from the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas. "More importantly, to avoid embarrassment in the event that interested taxpayers or even the media find out about the unutilized equipment from Canada, which saw much publicity in the pages of local newspapers, ascertain if those were not in fact merely cannibalized within the hospital’s vicinity and the spare parts alleged to have been lacking were not themselves pilfered from these machines," said the report, signed by Jose Desamparado, COA regional cluster director. Many of the purchases, the COA said, could have been avoided had the hospital management utilized or managed to fix-and-operate certain equipment donated by doctors from Canada. VSMMC earned P66 million last year. It is a tertiary hospital with an occupancy rate of 600 to 650 patients. In comparison, the 50-bed Eversley Child Sanitarium and the 25-bed St. Anthony Mother and Child Hospital earned P8.5 and P4.2 million respectively last year. Computing the figures as income per bed, COA said VSMMC should have earned more than P100 million in 2006. The COA report said money was also lost because many patients are referred to outside diagnostic clinics instead of the hospital's laboratory for lab work. Medical charts of patients confined at the VSMMC for the months of January and February 2006 showed the referrals even for services that the laboratory could extend. "It was likewise found out that it had been the standard operating procedure for the hospital that patients who were categorized as out-patient or OPD should have their laboratory tests outside the VSMMC even if some of these tests could be availed of at the hospital itself," the report said. The report cited the experience of a COA employee who went the VSMMC after feeling ill. He got in around 7 a.m. but was immediately sent to a diagnostic clinic across the hospital on B. Rodriguez Street for laboratory work. The employee left because he had no money with him. "Because he really felt very sick, he went back to the hospital the following day. It was at this point in time that the auditor found him at the emergency room where he told his story. He was fortunate because the auditor was together with the medical center chief who immediately ordered that the attending physician who referred him to the diagnostic clinic be traced," the report read. "What is more irregular is that the diagnostic clinic had been reportedly owned by one of the doctors of VSMMC, as evidenced by the official receipts issued," it added. Also, the COA report noted the unserviceable equipment sets are being displayed for people to see at the hospital's lobby. Busted sets include X-ray machines, ventilators and other laboratory gadgets. Supposedly, they cannot be fixed because spare parts are not or are no longer available locally. Ironically, the machines were only procured two years before the audit year. "Included in the list of unserviceable equipment are those donated from Canada for which even the cost of transporting the items already amounted to millions of pesos. So significant was the total value of the equipment that even Philippine Ambassador to Canada Francisco Benedicto took time to thank the Medical Equipment Modernization Opportunity, a group of doctors in Thunder Bay, Ontario, for facilitating the donation of the millions of dollars worth of medical equipment and instruments," the report added. The equipment arrived in eight large container vans. COA wants the hospital administration to follow the paper trail to find out if the equipment units are really busted or were purposely destroyed. "What makes all these circumstances suspicious is that a person making available equipment for rent to patients of the hospital has been making the rounds," the COA report read. The person, the report added, is a relative of a VSMMC employee. According to COA, the hospital's chief nurse, identified in another document as Alma Ungab, said the machines allegedly could not be used because they require 110 volts. She added that some equipment arrived with missing parts while the others simply malfunctioned. However, the COA report found that, "The question of voltage is rather shallow because if the hospital's officials were intent on using them, they could always buy transformers." The COA pointed out that some VSMMC officials were sent to Canada precisely for business related to the donation but most of the money was lost through procurement. Out of the P79,508,614.45 worth of purchases made by VSMMC during the audit period, P38,341,815.26 was "procurement through canvass," which was "dubiously done," the COA said. Another P27,954,256.31 were purchases made from one exclusive distributor, a multinational company. "This is an indication that public bidding, which is required by Republic Act 9184, was done away with in order to award contracts to favored suppliers. Thus, the hospital may not have obtained all those items at prices which were most advantageous to its coffers," the report read. - GMANews.TV