A public hospital made payments of €791,000 to an agency for nursing staff where had been no competitive tender for the service.
Concerns about compliance with procurement rules and lack of clarity over the beneficial owners of a related fundraising company have been identified at Peamount Healthcare, which operates Peamount Hospital.
The organisation provides rehabilitation services for older people and those with respiratory conditions, residential services for people with a neurological or intellectual disability, and day care for older people.
A review of governance at the organisation found that Peamount had already identified procurement as an area of non-compliance in 2015 and that it had committed to working with the HSE on increasing its compliance on procurement.
The HSE appointed Deloitte in 2016 to carry out reviews of voluntary hospitals and agencies which it funded to determine if they were complying with pay policy and to assess governance arrangements. These are separate to HSE internal audit reports.
Deloitte’s November 2017 report identifies that payments of €791,000 were made to an agency for nursing staff in circumstances where there had been no competitive tender. The consultants noted while a signed service-level agreement was in place with that supplier, there was no term or duration noted. Management subsequently notified Deloitte the agreement was formally re-entered into on an annual basis.
The report also identified an instance where no competitive tendering exercise was carried out for the supply of a special-purpose patient transport vehicle.
“One quote was obtained from the chosen supplier for the invoice selected [total invoice amount €41,000] and management have advised that the supplier was selected based on past reliability and reputation,” the report said.
“The total expenditure to this supplier in our period of examination was €85k.”
There was also expenditure of €47,000 on electrical goods in circumstances where there had been no tendering process. However, Deloitte noted a competitive tendering exercise was under way for such services at the time of the examination.
Peamount had also spent €40,000 on “medical consumable products” in the period, where a single supplier was the beneficiary even though there had been no tender exercise.
Dental hospital
A separate review by Deloitte of governance at the publicly funded Dublin Dental University Hospital (DDUH) found that board members, staff, pensioners and students of the hospital may apply for a partial exemption from dental charges to the value of €500 over a three-year period.
The report said the HSE was aware of the exemption policy and the Revenue Commissioners had approved that these treatments were not chargeable for the purposes of benefit-in-kind as they “facilitate the training and educational requirements of the DDUH”.