It Took More Than Three Years to Deliver Hearing Aids to Members of PAMI
<p>AGN’s report on the 2009 administration indicates that the audiometry of patients is outdated because the waiting time is so long. There are cases of the elderly who died before receiving their hearing aids. Two areas of the Institute did not agree on the number of devices that were distributed. The unmet demand reached 53.3% of the pattern of hearing loss.</p>
It took PAMI up to three years to deliver hearing aids to their members. According to a report from the General Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), which analyzed the period 2005-2006, the "significant delays" were recorded both in the bidding process and in the distribution of equipment.
Providing digital and analog hearing aids BTE, is a service that the Institute suspended during the crisis of 2001 and resumed in October 2003, with an order of 23 thousand units. Thus began the proceedings of the Public Tender 17/04 culminating in the purchase order issued on November 29, 2004 and delivery of the first 67 devices "until February 2005," says the AGN.
To order headsets, members must be submitted to the Local Management Unit (LGU) of PAMI that corresponds with the order of the otolaryngologist and studies, such as tonal and speech audiometry. But from the late recording the Institute, the Audit explained that these studies often are outdated and patients must repeat every step.
The Watchdog took a sample of 120 records requests for hearing aids handled by members of PAMI, and found 12 cases in which the equipment was delivered more than three years late, 26 applications with delays of more than two years, and 33 had to wait over a year to receive their aids. The report points out that there are 13 other cases of hearing aids that were not granted "by death of the insured or waiving of order." On the side of the undelivered, meanwhile, five cases had a delay of more than two years and five have been waiting for more than three years.
Another shortcoming that the AGN detected is orders of headphones that "were not consolidated in any area" of PAMI, ie, the time of the study, the Institute lacked a general census of records and, occasionally, this prevented determining exactly how many hearing aids had to deliver after 2001.
The "inconsistent data" - a word used by the audit- amounted to several aspects. First, PAMI did not measure the historical evolution of the register of members of hearing. In fact, the Management Coordination UGL acknowledged that it did not have data for 15 of the 34 months between January 2005 and October 2007. Second, the Institute does not know how many earphones were actually delivered. It did not have a computer system to control program execution and delivery of equipment "essential information is dispersed in two different managements" Coordinating the UGL and speech therapy area of the Department of Special Features. So while the first claims to have delivered to October 2007 about 41,880 hearing aids, the second argues that, two months earlier, in August, 46,398 devices were granted.
Similarly, "the delivery of hearing aids was insufficient to meet the needs of the members," concludes the audit from the data given to them by PAMI: 46,398 aids on a pattern of hearing loss were handed out in October 2007, for 86,925 patients, i.e., demand was met by 53.3%.
As for the budget for the program hearing aids, the watchdog added that the Institute had a budget of $ 10.5 million for 2005, and $ 13.5 million for 2006.