The backdrop to the privatisation of the management of three public hospitals is a can of worms that keeps depressing those who believe in taxpayers’ right to see their money well spent by the government.
More recent revelations are confirming how this project was at best grossly mismanaged and at worst used to syphon off funds from the public coffers in the pockets of yet unknown political actors and their cronies.
Steward Health Care chief executive Armin Ernst has told Times of Malta about the difficulties the new operators of the three hospitals are facing to get to grips with the way this contract was mismanaged by the original contractors, Vitals Global Healthcare.
Significantly, Ernst worked with VGH before he joined Steward.
It would be somewhat naïve to ask why the contract was initially awarded to VGH which had hardly any experience in managing hospitals.
The government keeps insisting that its due diligence process before selecting this contractor was robust but there is more than sufficient evidence that this was not the case. Why did VGH pull out of the contract in 2017 by selling its rights to Steward?
Steward’s good intentions to “implement a high quality, sustainable healthcare system” are commendable. But why have they as a private commercial enterprise found themselves in a situation where they have to act as a retroactive policing entity to resolve the tangled web of abusive mismanagement of public funds. One is justified in asking how efficacious was the due diligence process adopted by Steward before they took over the contract obligations.
The “suspicious” contractual agreements entered by VGH that bound the hospitals to years-long procurement obligations from firms ultimately tied to the investors behind the contract are another cause of grave concern to taxpayers. No wonder Steward is frustrated by the fact that they have to rectify failures that are attributable to the way the contract was mismanaged in the first three years of its term.
The government’s attempt to come clean on what has gone so seriously wrong in the management of this contract is so far unconvincing.
The National Audit Office is taking its time to establish the facts and the accountability trail of any wrong or abusive decisions. It looks likely that the NAO audit will take several more months to be completed.
In terms of the national importance of this issue, this delay is not good enough even if one understands the pressures on the resources of the NAO.
The new prime minister has set up a technical committee to establish the facts so that he can be updated before entering into any negotiations with Steward on their request for more funds. One can only hope that this technical team will draw some conclusions as early as possible to instil some transparency and sense of urgency in the resolution of this failed contract.
Whether this contract is worth rescuing or not will depend on the facts that come out of these various investigations.
What is known so far does not bode to strengthen trust that people should have in those who they entrusted as stewards of the public purse.
The prime minister must instil a sense of urgency in those conducting investigations on this contract to speed up the process of discovering what was behind the tangled web spun by those responsible for this contract.