The Marcial Fallas Clinic serves more patients than many regional and peripheral hospitals do. This Centro de Atención Integral en Salud (CAIS) had a waiting list of 23,300 people in need of an ultrasound in March 2019. By March 2020, the figure decreased to just 1,079. This is thanks to a special care program that cost the CCSS ₡223 million.
Although this work had already been done, four employees spent part of their working hours plus overtime filtering the registry of those waiting for this service. They received ₡8.9 million between salaries and overtime to do this job that had already been done. This was seen in an auditors’ calculation and is under investigation.
Those involved say that this happened due to a lack of communication and lack of duty of care since the list was not verified by the new leader when they took over from the previous leadership. It was also said that the previous leader left on bad terms, adding to the confusion. The coordinator was unaware of the work done months earlier and worked based on the list they were given, which had 18,000 patients.
The directors of the Health Services Network and Central-South Integrated Health Services Provision Network were given six months to figure out what happened and analyze the apparent irregular payment of overtime.
