Hospital execs knock ‘unreliable’ equipment acquired by Capitol
The provincial government of Iloilo recently acquired multi-million medical equipment for two district hospitals in the province but was returned by recipient hospitals for being unreliable, unusable and producing erroneous results.
Four senior staff and officials of the two hospitals observed that there were major deviations made on what was requested from what was eventually bought by the Iloilo Provincial Government.
The non-acceptance were made by the Federico Roman Tirador Sr. Memorial District Hospital in Janiuay, Iloilo and the Ramon Tabiana Memorial District Hospital in Cabatuan, Iloilo.
In the case of Federico Roman Tirador Sr. Memorial District Hospital, Medical Technologist II Josephine Tan and Chief of Hospital Dr. Noel Roy Gigare noticed that what was stated in the Purchase Request (PR) was nowhere to be found in the corresponding Purchase Order (PO).
It was important, the duo stressed as in the case of requested built-in mixer of the Hematology Analyzer. Three reasons were cited stating how a built-in mixer will provide correct proportion of blood and anti-coagulant ratio. Said specific request will also “minimize hemolysis due to uncontrolled force in mixing” and finally, “no need of manual agitation or mixing.”
Further still came the request for the equipment’s micro-cap inlet.
“Advantages of Microcapillary Inlet on PR which is none on PO,” Medical Technologist Tan and Dr. Gigare explained include convenience in the use of equipment “especially for Pediatric Specimens which are hard to obtain.”
“Cost is less expensive because it doesn’t require anticoagulated tube and syringe for specimen collection,” added reasons went. “Less time consuming because it requires finger tip pricking.”
The hospital officials added that the machine bought by the provincial government showed “unreliable results due to variability of results done by machine on open tube, predilution method compared to the manual method which is the final check.”
Worse still, “machine can’t be used for laboratory examinations due to erroneous results as tested.”
On the other hand, similar observations were submitted by Gilda Berio, Head Medical Technologist of the Ramon Tabiana Memorial District Hospital and Dr. Levi Osea Jr. Hospital Officer-in-Charge as regards the Capitol-purchased Hematology Analyzer.
“Machine gives erroneous results because it has low HGB, Hct and platelet count despite calibration with Normal, Low and Pathologic Control,” the non-acceptance of Berio and Dr. Osea Jr. stated.