Specialists to cost hospital K9m

 By ALISON ANIS

THE K9 million budget increase approved recently by the government for Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) will be used to pay medical specialists and consultants engaged by the department of health at the premier hospital, PMGH chief executive officer Sam Vegogo said.

“Really, when you look at it, there has been no increase at all to the hospital’s budget as we still end up with a budget of K39 million which is same as last year’s,” he said when explaining the increase in this year’s budget.

The total approved for PMGH under 2011 budget was K46 million which was an increase of K9 million from last year’s K39 million. 

According to Vegogo, a total of K9.8 million would be paid to medical specialists for their services to the hospital following the sudden shift of their payroll status by the department.

He explained that the specialists were previously employed under the department’s payroll system and that just this year the department has decided that they be included in PMGH’s payroll.

“That increase is mainly to do with the transfer of the medical specialists from the department’s payroll to the hospital. PMGH itself has not received any increase under the 2011 budget allocations,” Vegogo stressed adding that the hospital needed more funds for its 2011 operations.

Deputy secretary for national health and corporate policy with the department Mark Mauludu confirmed yesterday that the department was looking at transferring specialist doctors to individual hospitals  so they can be managed by the CEOs of the hospitals.

“The aim is to encourage hospitals to create more positions and transfer the medical specialists to care for these functions. Their roles and functions will be same but this time they will come directly under the hospital’s management and not the department,” Mauludu said.

He said the department had already done that at PMGH and would do the same in other provinces, adding that the K9 million was to fund  transferred responsibilities.