SOME CANCEROUS QUESTIONS

About twenty years ago, an unlikely trio got together to raise money for charity. There was Lindsay Fox, Marc Besen from Sussan and me. We wanted to raise a million dollars to buy a revolutionary cancer-fighting diagnostic machine called a CAT Scan. A Cat Scan. I always thought it was something you’d more likely find at the vet’s. The machine was needed by our top cancer hospital The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Known to everyone simply as the Peter Mac.
 
About twenty years ago, an unlikely trio got together to raise money for charity. There was Lindsay Fox, Marc Besen from Sussan and me. We wanted to raise a million dollars to buy a revolutionary cancer-fighting diagnostic machine called a CAT Scan.  A Cat Scan. I always thought it was something you’d more likely find at the vet’s.
 
The machine was needed by our top cancer hospital The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Known to everyone simply as the Peter Mac.
 
This was the 1980s and a million bucks was a lot of money. But we raised it. From memory we raised $500,000 in one night with a ball at the Hilton at $10,000 a table. Then they needed an extra couple of hundred thousand for a special air conditioned room to house the machine and we raised that too.
 
I mention all that to show a long association with Peter Mac and maybe to justify why I am asking some questions today about some of the goings on there.
 
I’m going to put the questions out there and hope somebody can give me plausible answers. There were stories recently about poor management in the IT department at Victoria Police. Can the same be said about the IT Department at Peter Mac?
 
Is this another case of bad management of public funds? A whistleblower says so and it seems a lot of dedicated and hard-working people at Peter Mac are frustrated and fed up.
 
The Director of Information Management at Peter Mac is Katerina Andronis. I’m told that, in essence, she manages all IT activities within the hospital.  The IT department services all the clinical and research divisions within the hospital.
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In that capacity, Ms. Andronis contracted the services of a company called Health Consulting Pty Ltd to undertake work in the hospital’s ambulatory department. The company was only registered in 2007. It’s believed the work was worth between $50,000 and $200,000.
 
I can’t give you the exact figure because it was never put out to public tender as specified in the Victorian Government’s Department of Health guidelines.
 
If not, why not?
 
The procurement guidelines for Victorian public hospitals and health services stipulate—for the purchase of goods or services valued at $25,000 to $150,000 – there must be a minimum of three written quotes. In excess of $150,000 there must be a public tender on the open market.
 
Was any other company consulted to tender for this job? That’s important because, you see, Health Consulting is owned by one William Paul. The company’s address is an apartment in Southbank. That’s where Mr. Paul lives, with his wife – Katerina Andronis from Peter Mac.
 
Was the board at Peter Mac aware of that family connection? Are they aware now?
 
William Paul confirmed to us today that his firm, Health Consulting, has done work for Peter Mac ‘but that has finished’.  And, yes, the IT boss at Peter Mac, Katerina Andronis, is his wife.
 
As I said there are a lot of dedicated and hard-working people at Peter Mac who are frustrated and fed up. Unanswered questions such as these do not help.
 
Footnote:
Shortly before I went on air we spoke to Ms. Andronis who said ‘Why is this news at the moment?’ And then to any other questions ‘I really can’t comment. It would be inappropriate.’
 
Watch this space.
 
Tuesday, January 19, 2010

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2010