Last week, an NAO report on human resources at Mount Carmel Hospital was tabled in Parliament.
Irregular engagements, contractual design flaws and a weak contract management functions at Mount Carmel Hospital were among the deficiencies noted by the NAO following its review of the contract for outsourced services. Such deficiences dilute value for money said the Auditor General Charles Deguara who on Wednesday presented the report to Speaker Anġlu Farrugia. The NAO found that, as at time of writing of this report, MCH was acquiring this service through a one year negotiated procedure since a new tender was not awarded before the contract's expiry in July 2018.
The report noted that the contract under review originally called for the deployment of approximately 60 full-time equivalents, but in fact 134 FTEs were deployed as at September 2018. Moreover NAO found that 47 of these outsourced personnel, though engaged through a contract for clerical services, have been deployed to carry out non-clerical responsibilities, such as maintenance and security duties.
This audit observed that, while personnel engaged through this contract and deployed to work as clerks are delivering an acceptable level of quality in their work, some of those deployed to carry out non-clerical duties are not meeting the expected level of service.
This concern is accentuated by MCH's management's assertion that it was found extremely difficult to dismiss a number of non-performers given that it itself had referred them for engagement to the service provider.
The NAO found the cleaning service was procured through a call for quotations even though it significantly exceeded the financial threshold for this method of procurement; no formal and documented contract was in place; a number of deployed personnel carried out tasks not related to cleaning duties; and the output of the outsourced personnel as well as the quality of the cleaning products being used at MCH were questionable.
In reply, the Ministry of Health welcomed the National Audit Office Report which reviewed the contract for Mount Carmel Hospital Clerical Services and other outsourced services. The ministry has ensured throughout the process that all resources were made available to the NAO for its thorough review and provided full cooperation.
Having taken account of the contents of the report it is useful to note that Mount Carmel Hospital has for many years suffered serious and severe structural deficiencies, both in its infrastructure and human resources. Indeed the need to increase the number of clinical and supportive staff has been felt for many years.
If one looks back over the last 10 years, staffing levels at Mount Carmel have increased steadily. In fact, the largest increase in hospital employees occurred between 2011 and 2012 when the headcount increased by 304. Since 2013, the average headcount increase has been of 83 per year. In the year under review by the NAO, the increase was of 81 support workers.
To this, one must add an increase of 37 in the number of clinicians, mainly doctors and nurses. It is also pertinent to note that a large number of these additional employees were necessary to start addressing the serious deficiencies which had accumulated over the years especially in the areas of hospital and patient security, as well as hospital maintenance.
The Ministry for Health is determined to address and resolve the many challenges faced by the mental health sector. It is with this in mind that a Mental Health Strategy for Malta 2020-2030 was launched for consultation last December, 2018 and a €30 million renovation plan for Mount Carmel to be executed over the coming years has also been initiated.
Not enough attention has been given to this report and one urges a wider follow-up. The NAO is hampered in its operation by looking strictly at figures and heads but there may be a wider implication. Here is a government-run institution where rules were thrown out of the window. We add that the intake reflected party and clientelar pressures with no checks being carried out until it was too late. All governments suffer from such pressures, but this is no reason why they keep repeating the same mistakes. Those who were responsible must be reprimanded.
from The Malta Independent https://ift.tt/2OCn8Dy
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment