Revamping of Jinnah Hospital’s orthopaedic dept lies in limbo

–DGM&E report says rehab project incomplete despite spending almost 100pc of its budget, passage of over a year since deadline

LAHORE: Despite spending almost 100 per cent of its budget, the authorities have failed to make functional the “Rehabilitation and Improvement of Orthopaedic Department” project at Jinnah Hospital Lahore (JHL) whereas over one-year has passed since its original deadline as well.

According to sources, the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at JHL is performing around 3,500 surgeries annually, which mainly include orthopaedic trauma. However, due to limited facilities, the department is unable to offer arthroplasties, spine surgeries and arthroscopic surgeries.

“To overcome this issue, a project titled ‘Rehabilitation and Improvement of Orthopaedic Department’ was proposed for the addition of treatment, surgical and diagnostic equipment/facilities at the department,” they said.

It was learnt that the original cost of the PC 1 of the project was Rs137.125 million in September 2015, whereas the cost was revised to Rs135.867 million in January 2017,

The project gestation period was 2016 to June 2017.

“The objectives of the project were to not only enhance the services, but to also help the department expand the spectrum of surgeries from orthopaedic trauma to spine, arthroplasty and arthroscopy,” they said and added the department was to be enabled to operate almost 6,000 cases annually which was to be a major burden share of the society, reduce the number of patients on long waiting lists in bigger institutions and all that at a fraction of the cost that government was bearing at major institutions.

An evaluation report on the project by Directorate General Monitoring and Evaluation (DGM&E) says, “A DGM&E team visited the JHL Orthopaedic Surgery Department on June 6, 2018. The data was collected and observations were recorded. The data analysis showed that despite spending nearly 100 per cent of the project budget, the project was not fully functional by the visit of the DGM&E which was after over a year since the project’s original completion period.”

The equipment was procured but the main component of the project which was the establishment of four modular operation theatres was not completed as only two of the theatres were functional, the report said.

“Due to pending work of two modular theatres, eight important equipment (of the total 19) procured for the upgradation of orthopaedic surgery department were uninstalled and non-functional. A similar situation was also observed in the upgradation of the JHL Cardiac and Neurosurgery departments.”

The report further said that evaluation findings suggested ensuring timely completion of project PC-I activities/milestones, project planning and implementation processes need to be streamlined and improved at the JHL.

It said that two modular operation theatres should be made functional to provide better treatment and surgical facilities to the general public.

“The gaps/reasons for the delay in the establishment/operationalisation of modular theatres need to be identified to fix the responsibility and improve future project planning. New equipment should be installed and made functional and the human resource should be appropriately trained to operate this equipment and perform the whole range of orthopaedic surgeries,” the report concluded.