The Health Ministry has paid over RON 13m and over USD 11m for a highly performing IT system for the hospitals, which however has never been functional, says a report conducted by the PM’s control body.
“During 2007-2010, the Health Ministry purchased one IT system for the hospitals, based on a government decision, in order to digitalize the management of the hospital administration. The system was designed to improve the quality of the services provided by the Romanian healthcare system, to provide a modern tool of resources control, to track down costs and monitor patients,” reads the report released on Wednesday.
Despite buying it, the Fundeni Hospital in Bucharest and the Emergency Hospital in Targu Mures for instance, preferred to use the old IT systems, arguing that the new application was providing cumbersome working tools and was lacking the SIUI app, which enables reports to the health insurance house. The representatives of the two hospitals also argued that the new programme was not covering the entire medical field.
“During 2008-2015, the Health Ministry had expenses mounting to USD 11.3m and RON 13,783,136 to implement the highly performing IT system in hospitals,” the report also says.
A report revealed on Monday by the PM’s control body shows that the Romanian state has spent over RON 3 billion for IT platforms in the past five years, with many of them unfunctional. The Government plans to set up a specialized control body to monitor the IT programme acquisitions.
The PM’s control body tracked down that nine ministries and subordinated institutions out in 19 paid over RON 110 M to install software programmes that have not been used or implemented anymore. Some programmes were also identified as having various failures.
“In the past five years, 3 billion RON were spent on IT platforms, money that went to 12-13 companies. A lot of money has been spent and the citizen doesn’t yet feels the quality of the public services,” PM Dacian Ciolos argued.
According to the Gov’t press release, the control body’s checks revealed that 19 public entities bought software products and licenses and clinched over 10,000 contracts/ orders, worth over RON 3.73 bln, VAT included, with a total sum of about RON 3.13 billion paid,” says the release.
The Executive discovered that many software services were not operational.
“Nine public entities and the subordinated institutions paid RON 110,290,733 for software products/licenses to be installed, but they were not used, implemented or they were identified as having failures for various reasons,” the release reported.
Find which IT companies were the beneficiaries of the public money here.