GOVERNMENT went against the recommendations of the Bermuda Hospitals Board when it awarded a $15-million contract to a “little-known” company, according to a former Board member.And Shadow Health Minister Louise Jackson claims Government deliberately inserted an impossible contractual clause in its proposal to force other bidders out of the running.

Kurron Shares of America Inc. won the four-year contract — to act as consultant to the BHB in developing a long-term health strategy for the island — ahead of world-renowned Johns Hopkins Medicine International.

The decision, made earlier this year, was shrouded in controversy following allegations that Kurron CEO Corbett Price is a friend of Premier Ewart Brown. It was also claimed that the New York-based firm donated at least $10,000 to the Tourism Helps Everybody Foundation, set up by Dr. Brown’s wife Wanda.

In May, Junior Health Minister Patrice Minors told the House of Assembly that “the Bermuda Hospitals Board informed the Cabinet that the only organisation that met the full technical appraisal, financial appraisal and strict evaluation and scoring criteria was Kurron Shares of America”.

But this week a former member of the BHB claimed the Board’s first recommendation had been for Johns Hopkins to be awarded the contract — a recommendation that was overruled by Government.

The Board member, who asked not to be named and who stepped down after the decision was made, said: “There were two parties involved in the decision — the Government and the Board.

“In this case the Board exercised due diligence, formed a point of view and came up with the decision, which was for Johns Hopkins.

“The Board gave its recommendation and then Government made its decision.”

The BHB has repeatedly refused to be drawn on whether it had pushed for Johns Hopkins, saying only that it “was fully involved in the selection process with the final selection decision being with Cabinet”.

Yesterday a BHB spokeswoman said: “As we have publicly stated before, this was a confidential process so we cannot disclose details. However, the Board was fully involved in the selection process and informed about Cabinet’s final decision.

“Our focus now is to improve our health service to the island and utilise the skills and expertise of Kurron, a company with over 30 years of experience successfully assisting hospitals and healthcare systems improve their management processes and internal systems.

The Mid-Ocean News also e-mailed questions to the Ministry of Health yesterday, asking if it could confirm the claim and if so, why it chose to reject the recommendation. No response was received by press time last night.

But the Shadow Health Minister did speak out this week, repeating allegations that cronyism influenced Government’s decision.

In a statement to the media, Mrs. Jackson said: “Bermudians already know that one measure of just how bad a decision it was to award the contract to oversee the management of the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital to the firm called Kurron Shares was that it went against the recommendation of the Hospital’s Board.

“What they don’t know is that the Board was unanimous in recommending the contract be awarded to Johns Hopkins, which everyone agrees, including the Government, is the gold standard in hospital management.

“Instead, the contract — valued at nearly $15 million over four years — was awarded to a relatively minor and little-known New York firm, Kurron Shares.

“Little known, that is, except in as much as our Premier, Dr. Ewart Brown, is said to be a friend of Corbett Price, its chairman. Kurron is not a natural fit with the job of work it is being asked to do at the hospital.

“Its speciality is financial rescue work, not re-organising a hospital many of whose problems revolve around its failing ability to deliver first-class health care.

“Some of Bermuda’s doctors who are close to the hospital have already said publicly that the Kurron Report of 2004, which the firm submitted after having been hired by Government to study the failings of the hospital, was of poor quality.

“One doctor was quoted by the media as having said it suffered from ‘a lack of definable scientific methodology and principles, lack of clear, evidence-based conclusions and alarmist language with dubious conclusions’. That the firm has been brought back to oversee putting its own poor recommendations into effect is absurdity built on absurdity.

“The man who told the Hospitals Board it couldn’t have its way with the contract was the then-Health Minister, Phil Perinchief. Mr. Perinchief has been quoted as having said that Johns Hopkins lost out on the contract because they wanted to negotiate what he called one of the ‘key components’ of the contract — a clause that allowed its termination, without cause, on 30 days’ notice.

“The third company in the running for the contract, Navigant Consulting, also turned this 30-day clause down. Kurron didn’t seem to mind, so the contract was awarded to them, as Minister Perinchief crowed at the time, because they were then the ‘only compliant applicant’.

“My guess is that the 30-day termination clause was a spoiler inserted by the Government to put Johns Hopkins and Navigant off. The clause means that if the Government doesn’t like the cut of its consultant’s jib, no matter how deeply it has embedded itself into the management process, the relationship can be brought to a full stop in 30 days.

“My understanding is that this is unusual and unnecessarily harsh in a contract of this kind, especially with the need for people to relocate to Bermuda to get the work done, and any consultant worth its weight would try to get it altered.

“It was that technicality that allowed the Junior Health Minister, Patrice Minors, to say in the House of Assembly recently, in answer to a question I asked about the awarding of the contract, that ‘the Bermuda Hospitals Board informed the Cabinet that the only organisation that met the full technical appraisal, financial appraisal and strict evaluation and scoring criteria was Kurron Shares of America’.

“That last part was just window dressing. What she really meant was that of the three companies on the short list, only Kurron was prepared to accept the Government’s draconian 30-day termination clause.

“Why was Kurron prepared to go along with it? Well, you don’t think Michael Scott and Patrice Minors are going to fire a friend of Dr. Brown’s, do you?

“What is really sad about this whole affair is that Dr. Brown’s meddling in health care in Bermuda has turned the Hospitals Board, which was set up as a quango, and should therefore be running the hospitals without any Government interference at all, into a kind of joke, an organisation that has had five different chairmen in the last six months.

“Once, the fact that the Board was made up of distinguished senior members of the medical profession and distinguished senior members of the business community, allowed it to act as a buffer between the hospital and the Ministry.

“It could save the hospitals from being buffeted on the winds of the political flavour-of-the-month in health care — those fashionable, but often disastrously bad ideas that politicians are prey to.

“But now that it has been made clear to them that Dr. Brown and his Cabinet are going to tell them what to think, I don’t know how much longer the board is going to exist as a meaningful player in future health care decisions.”

Government ‘went against Board on contract’