Wages Were Paid With Hospital Funds Even Though There Is a Specific National Budget for Salaries
<p style="line-height: 20.8px;">It happened in Salta, in a health center in the town of Rosario de la Frontera, 174 kilometers from the provincial capital, where professionals were employed by the Cholera Program. According to local Audit, it cannot give an opinion on the financial statements of the Hospital, which on the other hand, has no record of the stock of medicines and supplies.</p>
According to the Auditor General of Salta (AGPSA, for its acronym in Spanish) in a hospital in the town of Rosario de la Frontera salaries paid to health workers of the Cholera Program was funded by the health center, even though it had specific national allocations for these assignments.
This is the Melchora Figueroa Cornejo Hospital, where a program aimed at strengthening primary care and the development of activities to ensure basic services to the population at risk operates.
For payment of salaries, auditors recommended that the hospital "health workers remuneration, are carried out with the funds allocated for this purpose," and "apply the funds tuition, according to the regulations".
The report, adopted this year on 2005 data, notes that in addition, "the audit cannot give an opinion on the fairness and integrity of the figures presented in the Financial Statements and Budget Execution Reports."
In this regard, it was noted that "there is no integrated accounting and budgetary registration in the Management of Hospital Management System" which enables the accuracy of the amounts in budget execution reports.
It was even found that the Department of Administration provincial health ministry "has no record of consumer goods."
Moreover, the report says that "the internal control system has weaknesses that could lead to materialize generated or different types of irregularities." In fact, the AGPSA said that in the stores sector, "there was no documentation to support the income of consumer goods manufactures, which makes adequate control of stock."
In the hospital pharmacy "there are no records of permanent stock of medicines and supplies," and there is no information on a person responsible for the area, "there is no division of the functions of receiving, storage, delivery and supervision of medicinal products."
Finally, the report notes that "the Melchora Hospital Figueroa Cornejo has not developed indicators to assess the effectiveness, efficiency and economy, on the fulfillment of the objectives of their health care management and administrative and financial management."