HUKM tried to cut cancer treatment costs, patients paid the price - audit

Summary

• The National Audit Department finds that the delayed delivery of radiotherapy equipment by a contractor jeopardised cancer patients’ treatment at HUKM.

• The hospital’s tender committee ignored technical and financial assessment recommendations but chose the company citing lower maintenance costs.

• The audit flags other questionable tenders by the hospital, including a contract to an inexperienced food caterer lacking halal certification and a lift upgrade contractor with a non-compliant “sick project”.

A university hospital’s attempt to save costs in providing cancer treatment has ended up jeopardising patients' health, a National Audit Department probe found.

This is after the firm that won the contract failed to provide Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Hospital (HUKM) with a linear accelerator (Linac) radiotherapy system and other supporting equipment on time.

In an audit report released today, the department noted that the firm, identified as 0074062-D in the report, was supposed to deliver the equipment on Sept 18 last year.

However, by the time the audit probe concluded on Jan 17, the equipment had yet to be delivered to the hospital, which is now named Canselor Tuanku Muhriz Hospital (HCTM).

"This impacted HCTM's services. The delay in starting treatment impacted the survival of 20 patients who had to wait between one and eight weeks (for treatment)," the audit report said.

In June last year, the company asked to postpone the completion of its tender to Feb 12 this year, which was approved. It further asked for another deferment in December to an unspecified date, which HCTM rejected.

However, fault for the delay doesn't just lie with the company, the audit found, but with the hospital's tender procurement committee.

During the tender process, the pre-tender, technical assessment, and financial assessment committees did not recommend appointing 0074062-D, even though it passed technical and financial scrutiny.

The technical assessment committee also noted that the company's equipment offering did not meet specifications on integration with the hospital's Aria system.

However, the tender procurement committee went against the committee’s recommendations to appoint 0074062-D.

Unsatisfactory justification

In justifying the decision, HCTM said the tender procurement committee had chosen 0074062-D because it fulfilled 90.36 percent of the technical assessment criteria, offered the second-lowest bid at RM22 million, and gave the cheapest quotation for maintenance cost at RM960,000 per year.

This was in comparison to RM1.09 million per year for maintenance quoted by the lowest bidder in the tender process.

The Audit Department found the explanation unsatisfactory.

The report also showed the cost-saving decision was made despite one company - 0050470-K - submitting a bid for just RM370,000 more than the winning bid, but with the highest score in the technical assessment at 98.05 percent.

However, 0050470-K's maintenance cost quotation was not specified in the report. It is unclear whether that weighed on the final decision.

Other issues

Besides the cancer treatment equipment issue, the Audit Department also flagged two other tenders that the hospital had approved - one for a food caterer and another to upgrade its lifts.

In the caterer case, the tender procurement committee had awarded a RM25.6 million contract to an inexperienced company that did not meet technical specifications - including having halal certification - but had sufficient capital to operate, although it was not recommended by the financial assessment committee.

It should be noted that none of the companies that applied for the tender received the thumbs up from both the technical and financial assessment committees.

The hospital also awarded a RM10.8 million contract to firm 0726241-U, which had a "sick project", which was not in compliance with guidelines for tenders on major works.

While the hospital argued that further checks found that many of the company's unsatisfactory works were actually "on time", the Audit Department said 0726241-U should not have been considered in the first place regardless due to having a sick project.

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