LAST WEEK the Health Ministry announced that it would set up an internal audit team, made up of technocrats. In a brief announcement it was reported that this team would be responsible for monitoring operations both in the ministry and the state hospitals. The objective was to make management more efficient, by identifying weaknesses and operational problems. Having identified problems the team would submit proposals for solving them.
In addition to this, the team of technocrats would ensure that decisions were being implemented both within the ministry and at hospitals, while it would also have the authority to monitor spending by different departments. The team, which would be under the authority of the ministry’s permanent secretary, has not been put together yet and it could be many months before it starts work.
The national strategy for tackling cancer was announced by the health minister last November, but the committee to run it was announced 10 months later – in September. If the internal audit team existed, perhaps it would not have taken so long for the committee to be put together.
The decision to set up an internal audit team was taken because the health ministry has suffered a lot of negative publicity in the last year or so. There have been press reports about hospital departments not functioning because of staff shortages, long waiting lists for treatment, the cancellation of operations because of a lack of surgery consumables, expensive equipment gathering dust in store-rooms and irregularities in tenders’ procedures for equipment and medical supplies.
The list of problems and weaknesses is endless, creating the impression that the health ministry is in disarray. Of course it is doubtful whether an internal team of bureaucrats will be able to solve all these problems, which are caused by bad management, from the top down. This is the ministry in which the health minister has been given absolute authority to decide to which hospitals abroad patients should sent for treatment.
And he had been sending patients to Israeli hospitals, via a Cyprus-based company which was taking a cut of the hospital bill, without having negotiated prices. He went to Israel to do this, only last month, after deputies made a fuss. As for the private hospitals in Cyprus, to which he sends a few patients, he has not yet bothered to negotiate prices.
With this type of leadership, is it really a surprise that the health ministry and state hospitals are plagued by problems? Under the circumstances it is very difficult to believe that the newly-announced internal team will dramatically improve things, when it is eventually set up. After all, it will have no authority to question the decisions of the minister whose leadership leaves much to be desired.
