An express audit of the Risaralda Comptroller’s Office revealed administrative, disciplinary and fiscal findings of the management of the San Jorge Hospital in the period 2018-2021.
A complaint filed with the Risaralda General Comptroller’s Office requesting an investigation into the decision of the San Jorge de Pereira Hospital to lift the embargo on the EPS Medimás accounts and the allegedly irregular processing of a contract to carry out the physical cadastre of the healthcare center , led to a series of findings that were debated yesterday at the installation of the regular session of the Departmental Assembly.
Based on said complaint, the audit office carried out an express audit in the 2018-2021 period, which concluded with four findings of an administrative nature, two with alleged disciplinary scope and two for alleged fiscal scope, as warned by the Comptroller in charge Mateo Cadavid Jaramillo , when intervening in the plenary of the Assembly.
Photo: SuppliedThese facts are related to the lifting of the precautionary measure that the Hospital had applied against the EPS Medimás to recover the money owed, the deficiencies and shortcomings in the process of contracting the Hospital Physical Registry consultancy, the deficiencies in the function of supervision by allowing delays in payments to personnel hired by a temporary service company and the delay in the payment of social security and parafiscal of personnel linked through temporary service companies.
The Risaralda Comptroller General’s Office processed the findings with fiscal and disciplinary scope to the Attorney General’s Office, while today the deputies also agreed to transfer them to the Attorney General’s Office for criminal matters.
MEDIMÁS CASE
On May 11, 2021, the Hospital and Medimás signed a payment agreement for $35,000 million that was to be paid in 20 monthly installments of $1,750 million, plus the commitment of a direct transfer of $3,000 million, which were to begin to be paid on May 30. May of that year.
Due to the breach of that agreement, on November 12, 2021, the hospital notified Medimás, through the firm Sinergia Procesos, of the coercive collection of these monies, given the evidence of the existence of a clear and express obligation of that EPS for the sum of $27,811,205,342 plus default interest.
That same month, the then manager of the Hospital, Nini Lorena Acevedo Pérez, was invited to Bogotá by the EPS Medimás with the intention of renegotiating the payment agreement that they had breached, to which the official flatly refused. Consequently, on November 16, the Head of the Banco de Bogotá Seizure Center was notified of the precautionary measure on six accounts that Medimás had in said bank and where, at that time, it had balances of more than $47,000 million.
As reported by the Risaralda Comptroller’s Office, on November 15 the new manager of the Hospital, María Elena Ruiz, “made the unilateral decision to lift the precautionary measure on the Medimás accounts without fulfilling the legal requirements, violating the provisions contemplated in the functions manual, the tax statute and internal resolutions”, while signing a new payment agreement with Medimás with a first payment of $5,000 million in December and successive monthly payments of $4,250 million until reaching $27,811 million. Said decision was not endorsed by the lawyer Gloria Patricia Mesa, who at that time was a legal adviser and who revealed in the plenary session of the Assembly yesterday that she was never consulted by the manager on the subject.
What is particular about the case is that in March 2022 the Superintendency of Health ordered the liquidation of EPS Medimás, leaving the payment agreement up in the air and causing alleged property damage to the hospital in the amount of $15,513 million.
THE CADASTRE CASE
In 2018, the San Jorge Hospital signed contract 312-2018 with Mauricio Castro Soriano for a value of $749,082,081 to advance a consultancy for the hospital physical cadastre within a period of five months.
In this regard, the Comptroller’s Office found irregularities in the previous studies, to the point that they do not appear signed by anyone, there were no managers in the elaboration of the budgets and market studies, the official budget was overestimated, in some areas of the hospital no lifting although the contractor charged for all areas of the hospital and made VAT withholdings that did not turn to the DIAN at the time.
The Comptroller’s Office notes that “The ESE Hospital Universitario San Jorge, incurred unnecessary expenses and the people who were in charge of the process at the time should have warned that Resolution 0293 of 2004 did not apply to the entity, since it is for Institutions that Provide Health Services of the first level and the previous study was based mainly on a norm that did not apply to the entity”.
IMPROVEMENT PLAN
The Comptroller in charge of Risaralda, Mateo Cadavid Jaramillo, explained that regarding the administrative findings, the Comptroller asked the Hospital to sign an Improvement Plan, in accordance with the guidelines of Resolution 0177 of 2021, in order to thoroughly eradicate the deficiencies notified.
Yesterday in the plenary session of the Departmental Assembly, the manager of the San Jorge Hospital, Javier Alejandro Gaviria, reported that said plan was presented to the Comptroller’s Office on January 17 and will have its first evaluation exercise this March. “We have adopted the corrective measures of the case trying to do things well so as not to incur failures in the different processes,” said Gaviria.
REACTIONS
The deputies Diego Naranjo, Daniel Silva and Durguez Espinosa, who intervened in the debate, highlighted the seriousness of the events detected by the Comptroller’s Office in the period 2018-2021 and asked that the findings also be transferred to the General Prosecutor’s Office for investigations of a criminal nature where appropriate.