St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin awarded contracts worth almost €2 million over two years to a UK company that had a business relationship with one of its senior executives.
The hospital has declined to say whether the contracts awarded to Northgate Public Services were publicly advertised or the subject of a competitive tendering process, as required by HSE rules.
The digitising of thousands of patient records was broken into 19 separate “consignments”, with an average value of €90,000 each. An EU-wide tendering process would have been required if the work had been carried out under a single contract.
Bill Maher, a former director of operations and acting chief executive at the hospital, has said he had no role in engaging Northgate, with which he had a long-standing consultancy arrangement, for the work.
He has also said he informed the St Vincent’s board of his relationship with Northgate before joining the hospital.
The hospital says Northgate was one of three suppliers initially invited to make a “proposal” or “submission” for digitising some hospital records in 2012.
The situation was urgent because of industrial action taken by staff at the medical records department at the time, a spokesman told The Irish Times.
Northgate was awarded two initial contracts worth a total of €340,000 but there was no contractual commitment for it to process further consignments at this time.
Providing consultancy services
“In 2014, additional contracts were entered into with Northgate Public Services due to the growing numbers of medical records arising from increased hospital activity.”
The hospital says Mr Maher “made it known” on his appointment to St Vincent’s in 2007 that he had been providing consultancy services to Northgate while working in Britain’s National Health Service. “The then chairman of the hospital board, who was the chair of the selection panel, was aware of this situation.”
Mr Maher was not a member of the project team that appointed Northgate to archive hospital records, the spokesman said.
“Both Mr Maher and hospital management took all the necessary steps to ensure that decisions regarding the engagement of Northgate to provide services to the hospital did not include Mr Maher so as to avoid any conflict of interest.”
Mr Maher could not be reached for comment but has previously provided the Health Service Executive with information on his relations with Northgate.
In January 2012, he was seconded to work for the HSE as chief executive of the Saolta hospital group in the west, where his links with the UK company became the focus of controversy after Northgate secured contracts worth €340,000.
Audit report
A subsequent audit report found he should have declared the relationship to senior HSE management and that a potential conflict of interest existed in respect of contracts signed by Saolta with Northgate.
“My consultancy payments were not tied in any way, shape or form to procurement of services from Northgate,” Mr Maher is quoted as saying in the audit report. He said his advice to Northgate was aimed at developing the NHS and Australia markets, new product development and overall marketing strategy.
St Vincent's says the digitisation of patient records carried out by Northgate has been a success, but some clinical staff have told The Irish Times they continue to rely on the old paper records.
The contracts provided for the transportation of confidential patient records to the UK, their digitisation and short-term storage and the destruction of the originals after a year.
Mr Maher was appointed head of the RCSI hospital group in 2015 but left after a year and is currently chief executive of the private Bon Secours Health System.
