Eight staff members from the Karl Huesner Memorial Hospital have been sent home on administrative leave until the police and KHMH management find out who is involved in the burglary of several critical pieces of health care equipment. The three electro-cardiogram machines and two space lab monitors were reportedly stolen from the hospital’s medical storeroom sometime between August of 2007 and January 2008. The equipment worth a total value of fifty six thousand, three hundred and fifty dollars were discovered missing on January eleventh during a reconciliation and updating of the KHMH fixed assets.
Today 7NEWS spoke with KHMH Chief Executive Officer Dr. Alvaro Rosado. Rosado says the employees sent home have not been fired and are on full pay but were sent on leave until the duration of the investigation. Rosado says all indications suggest that it was an inside job.
Dr. Alvaro Rosado, CEO - KHMH
“We have trucks coming in everyday delivering stuff and materials. We have people working twenty four hours a day, so it would not be unusual for people to be in that area at night, at anytime of the day. Our people are called out for example if there is a need for some special piece of equipment to be taken out of the stores, special medicines whatever. If there is an urgent need for that, it would be brought in at night so people have access twenty four hours a day. So it is conceivable that somebody could have planned this sort of thing."
Jacqueline Godwin, 7NEWS
These are some very expensive pieces of equipment that were stolen and very critical to the sort of care that is delivered from the KHMH. How will this affect the services that you offer to the public?
Dr. Alvaro Rosado,
“Well, fortunately I can say that there should really be no immediate effect on these services. I believe just under a year ago that the Ministry of Health was asked to assist in procuring equipment to make us viable in any kind of conditions at all and we bought quite a bit of equipment including these monitors. There were two space lab monitors and three EKG machines. We bought enough for all the units that needed to have one on hand.
There are not more than fifty places in the entire country where these equipment could not be used. I am sure the police will leave no stones unturned in investigating and we have already given them all the information we think might be helpful. I believe they have started interviewing the staff already and I am pretty sure that very soon we will get some information.
During that time the staff, there are ten people on staff in stores, a manager and an assistant manager and eight employees. We have very good reason to believe that the manager and the assistant manager are not involved in the missing pieces of equipment. So we have sent all other staff on administrative leave. They are out on leave now, we are recruiting new staff now and this is going to be a permanent situation because we believe it was also the culture that existed in the store room that allowed this to happen.”
If you have any information that can lead to the recovery of the KHMH’s three EKG machines and two space lab monitors, call the nearest police station.
