At day’s end, medical union not satisfied with board
There is more on the K.H.M.H. The Board told the media this afternoon that they are not willing to have the Chairman, Doctor Ricardo Fabro, C.E.O., Francis Longsworth, and Finance Director, Carlos Perrera, be sent home during the investigations. But what about the questions the doctors raised over contracts? And the renovations on an area near the Emergency Unit at the hospital? And the medication that the doctors say is still sitting in the store room one month after it was purchased because it caused allergic effects? We have both sides.
Dr. Francis Longsworth, C.E.O., K.H.M.H.
“We were told by the staff at the Radiology Department that they can’t go into the long weekend without contrast, which I said well sounds—you know how much contrast you all need down there but let’s say we can’t go we’ll try and get contrast. When we look at the previous purchase of contrast, the price; the unit price seemed exceedingly high. So we said we need to look for a cheaper source of this contrast. We looked locally and we could not find a cheaper source of the brand that was requested, which was Omnipaque. We could not find Omnipaque on short notice in Belize at any price. They all have the same usage profile, they all have the same side effect profile and adverse reaction profiles and this is something that I’d like to point out that all contrast have the possibility of an adverse reaction to any patient at anytime that you use it. So to say that one will cause a reaction and the other will not is again not true. You can get a reaction with any contrast at anytime. We got some Omnipaque and we placed a large order for Omnipaque out of the US at a reduced price. Unfortunately, the suppliers sent us the wrong product. And again, we have documentation of this. The purchase order clearly says Omnipaque. They sent us Isovue. So when the Isovue came in and Mr. Perrera informed me, I said to him there is no way we’re going to put Isovue out there with our patients. They are already reporting problems with Ultravis, put it in the store room and we’ll send it back.”
Dr. John Sosa, President, B.M.D.U.
“The contrast has been sitting in the store room for a month. When you get things that are not good, you send it back almost immediately usually. Why is it there for a month? I don’t know. If or if it was not sent correctly by the supplier the supplier can tell us and we can find that out very, very easily. We can make a call and find out. The issue is this, why have the contrast there so long if you say that it’s not good. It’s been there a month. We don’t know.”
Dr. Francis Longsworth
“About the renovations at Accident and Emergency, this is one of the first issues I dealt with after coming on staff here. I was presented with some estimates for renovation in the A&E Department and I was not in agreement with the estimates. I took it to my management team and I said these estimates are too high, there is absolutely no way I’m going to pay this money for this work, therefore we have to do something about it. Please call in the contractor so that I can speak to him. I sat down with the contractor and we went through item by item and we made cuts in the estimate and we both agreed on those cuts. I took it back to management and I said this is what I have arrived at with the contractor and can we go ahead now. My maintenance department said but C.E.O., we can handle some of this work. So I said well beautiful so we’ll cut the estimate some more. So I went back to the contractor and I said look, my maintenance department can do XYZ. They can put back in the lights, they can put in the new toilet, they can hang the doors, let’s take that out of the contract and he agreed. And I don’t remember the exact figures for the contract but we reduced the contract figures by between I think fifteen thousand dollars and the final cost along with some repair work that had to be done; some additional repair work. I think if the original cost was sixty plus thousand, we brought it down to about forty-seven thousand in the final analysis.”
Dr. John Sosa
“We would like to know if in fact there were two bids for that; one on the low end and one on the higher end. We understand that there were two and the higher one was the one that got the contract and that one was a person from Orange Walk. It would be interesting to find out what number was the lower bid and how much lower it was. That’s what we would like to know.”
