Cebu hospital used ‘pork barrel’ for salaries — COA

CEBU — The Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) has violated government policies by using close to P1 million of congressional funds for the salaries of its employees, the Commission on Audit (COA) said in its 2004 audit of the hospital’s operations.

COA said the hospital spent for salaries a total of P932,954.03 out of the Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAFs) that some Cebu congressmen had granted supposedly for indigent patients.

This, according to COA, violates National Budget Circular No. 476, which provides that PDAFs shall not be used to pay for personal services such as salaries, honoraria, allowances, bonuses and other forms of compensation.

It was not stated in the COA report, however, what sanctions could be imposed against violators of the budget circular, but it said hospital officials should immediately refrain from doing it this year.

Some Cebu congressmen, including Reps. Antonio Cuenco and Raul del Mar of Cebu City’s south and north districts, respectively, put up P5 million each every year for the medical needs of indigent patients at the VSMMC.

But despite the violations committed by hospital officials, Cebu congressmen still continue to give part of their PDAFs to help indigent patients from their respective districts.

Del Mar, for his part, said he has been giving financial assistance to the VSMMC since 1999, amounting to a total of P56 million and benefiting more than 33,000 indigents from his district.

A COA official, however, revealed that some hospital officials have been investigated for the alleged use of at least P3 million of PDAF to refund a private drugstore for medicines dispensed to indigent patients.

An indigent patient usually gets his medicine by securing a prescription from the attending physician, a referral slip from the congressman concerned, and a validation from the hospital social worker, and then presents these documents to the hospital drugstore.

But when the hospital drugstore runs out of stocks of the prescribed medicine, the patient is advised to get it from a private drugstore using the same documents.

The private drugstore later collects from the hospital the payment for the medicines given to patients, by issuing a delivery receipt, cash invoice and the documents, which the patients had submitted.

But COA said some doctors complained that the signatures found in the prescriptions attached to the demand slip from the private drugstores were not theirs and thus forged.

Some disbursement vouchers were not also supported with referral slips, as required. — With Freeman News Service