Overtime bill slashed

JENSEN LA VENDE and

SHAS­TRI BOODAN

North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh says he has man­aged to dras­ti­cal­ly cut the nurs­ing over­time bill, as he ac­cused the au­thor­i­ty’s pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of pre­sid­ing over a decade of cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism and mis­man­age­ment.

Gopeesingh said since he was ap­point­ed in Au­gust last year, he was able to re­duce the over­time bill from $40 mil­lion to less than one-tenth of that at the coun­try’s largest ter­tiary health­care in­sti­tu­tion.

“When we came in, over­time pay­ments for pool nurs­ing were close to $40 mil­lion. We have now brought that fig­ure down to less than $4 mil­lion while main­tain­ing ad­e­quate nurs­ing per­son­nel. It still needs im­prove­ment, and with the hir­ing of 78 ad­di­tion­al nurs­es, we ex­pect fur­ther progress,” Gopeesingh said dur­ing the NCRHA’s Pub­lic Board Meet­ing at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, on Thurs­day.

Gopeesingh said the au­thor­i­ty had since re­quest­ed a foren­sic au­dit in­to ex­ces­sive over­time pay­ments and oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at the NCRHA.

Gopeesingh has been at log­ger­heads with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion over the is­sue of over­time pay­ments to nurs­es since he took of­fice.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, at­tendee Avion Dray­ton-Bai­ley ques­tioned the board about the al­leged cor­rupt prac­tices in­volv­ing the nurs­ing pool sys­tem. She ques­tioned what the next step was and whether the au­thor­i­ty had not on­ly iden­ti­fied those re­spon­si­ble but re­port­ed the mat­ter to the po­lice. She al­so ques­tioned whether any em­ploy­ees had been dis­ci­plined since the sup­posed cor­rup­tion was un­cov­ered.

In re­sponse, Gopeesingh re­vealed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly eight nurs­es in the nurs­ing pool had each re­ceived more than $50,000 in over­time over a three-month pe­ri­od, while two re­ceived more than $70,000 dur­ing the same pe­ri­od.

“That was equiv­a­lent to more than 400 hours per month. It was im­prac­ti­cal and that was fraud,” he said, adding that in­stances like those were what prompt­ed the foren­sic au­dit to be launched in­to the nurs­ing pool sys­tem and oth­er con­cern­ing is­sues.

He said one re­cip­i­ent of over­time was a 70-year-old re­tiree who got more than $70,000.

“There were about 10 peo­ple at the top of the list, but we still need nurs­es and we need their sup­port,” Gopeesingh said.

De­spite the con­cerns, Gopeesingh still praised the nurs­ing staff, but voiced his dis­plea­sure over what was found.

“The nurs­es worked very hard and dili­gent­ly, but I was dis­mayed to find the re­al prob­lems with­in that nurs­ing pool,” he said.

Gopeesingh was adamant that there was wide­spread cor­rup­tion in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the nurs­ing pool. He added that in the wake of their dis­cov­er­ies, a clear line of pro­ce­dures be­fore a nurse is giv­en over­time had been im­ple­ment­ed.

Gopeesingh said the au­thor­i­ty in­her­it­ed an or­gan­i­sa­tion in dis­re­pair af­ter what he de­scribed as 10 years of poor gov­er­nance be­tween 2015 and 2025. He said de­spite spend­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.4 bil­lion over the pre­vi­ous decade, on­ly two of the eight op­er­at­ing the­atres at the EWM­SC were func­tion­al when the cur­rent board took of­fice.

“What a shame and dis­grace,” he said.

“Six op­er­at­ing the­atres were not work­ing. The air-con­di­tion­ing sys­tems had failed, the­atre lights were miss­ing, op­er­at­ing ta­bles were miss­ing. It was a mess.”

He said the au­thor­i­ty has since in­stalled new 30-ton air-con­di­tion­ing units, restor­ing sev­en of the eight op­er­at­ing the­atres to ser­vice and ex­tend­ing op­er­at­ing hours in­to the evenings and week­ends to re­duce sur­gi­cal back­logs.

Ac­cord­ing to Gopeesingh, the NCRHA now per­forms ap­prox­i­mate­ly 22,500 sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures an­nu­al­ly across its fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing about 7,200 at the EWM­SC, 3,000 at the Mount Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal, 8,000 at the Den­tal Hos­pi­tal, 2,000 at the Max­illo­fa­cial Clin­ic, 1,300 at the Vet­eri­nary Clin­ic and 1,200 at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Gopeesingh al­so trained his anger on fel­low doc­tors, sug­gest­ing an ad­just­ment to how they cur­rent­ly op­er­ate. He said NCRHA em­ploys ap­prox­i­mate­ly 720 house of­fi­cers at an an­nu­al cost of $200 mil­lion and 120 con­sul­tants whose salaries to­tal $84 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, but not­ed that some doc­tors re­fused to show up for work.

“When you call out for a con­sul­tant, they don’t come out—they’re not there. In­stead, the reg­is­trars, who are be­low the con­sul­tants, come out and do the work,” he re­vealed.

He sug­gest­ed that the au­thor­i­ty should ex­am­ine whether few­er con­sul­tant po­si­tions and greater re­liance on reg­is­trars would im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery. He said as a doc­tor for 51 years, he nev­er ne­glect­ed his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and was “dis­ap­point­ed in his con­sul­tant col­leagues.”

He al­so al­leged that a team of or­thopaedic sur­geons, who owned a com­pa­ny sup­ply­ing or­thopaedic equip­ment used in hip and knee surg­eries, had billed the NCRHA over $10 mil­lion.

“If you don’t buy it from them, they’re not do­ing the surgery. I checked to­day, and we owe them about $16 mil­lion.”

Gopeesingh said the au­thor­i­ty is al­so work­ing to re­cruit more qual­i­fied mam­mo­g­ra­phers, ra­di­ol­o­gists and oth­er al­lied health pro­fes­sion­als.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for com­ment on Gopeesingh’s claims, for­mer NCRHA CEO Davlin Thomas said as a cur­rent em­ploy­ee, he could not com­ment on the mat­ter.

Calls and mes­sages to the Med­ical Board for a re­sponse to Gopeesingh’s claims al­so went unan­swered up to press time.