He kept the IMSS deals with laboratories and anesthesia suppliers

Enrique Méndez, Fernando Camacho and Arturo Sánchez

La Jornada newspaper
Friday, February 21, 2025, p. 7

The Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) has to clarify an expense of 1,225 million pesos in laboratory studies and anesthesia services provided by companies that did not comply with the contracts, as they delivered incomplete equipment or medications.

The firm with more irregularities is CBH+, which in that year obtained 30 contracts for almost 4 billion pesos, mainly for anesthesia services for 67 IMSS medical units throughout the country, but ASF said that different hospitals requested the termination of the termination of the Agreement for breaches, failures in their equipment and lack of supplies.

However, the audit detailed, for 2023 No termination of the contract was carried out.

The supervisory entity reported that, given the lack of supplier supplies and to carry out 27 thousand 814 scheduled operations, the IMSS used its own medical equipment and supplies, with a cost of 98 million 697 thousand 600 pesos.

Both in the tender to carry out laboratory studies and to provide anesthesia services, the ASF detected that companies with different social reasons participated, but with the same partners.

This happened with Haner and Elismart, who had already provided the laboratory service in Yucatán and Nuevo León in 2022 and in part of 2023, and They participated separately; However, shareholders participate in both companies In the bidding of March 2023, And in the processes of receiving proposals and clarifications, the same shareholders continued.

Meanwhile, in the tender for anesthesia services, of the 15 participants It was known that different moral people are linked to natural persons who are representatives, proxies, partners and/or shareholders of participating companies; Therefore, it was pointed out that moral people are linked to each other and participated both in market research and in the bidding process.

In the case of CBH+ the audit detected that the IMSS reported that it covered 55 million 509 thousand 800 pesos to the company, but It was identified that the amount of 9 million 330 thousand 400 pesos was paid, a difference of 46 million 179 thousand 400 pesos.

Different hospitals reported service failures, among others, lack of psychotropic medications (fentanyl) and healing material, absence of the supplier, partial delivery of equipment – for example, lack of oximetry sensors -, and the IMSS had to supply them.

Among the observations of the audit, it emphasizes that there was a case that directly attempted the physical integrity of one of the patients by failure of anesthesia machines that The years of use are still.

Likewise, in Yucatan it was detected that the Directorate of the General Hospital of Zone 3 requested the GNK Logistics supplier vouchers of the application of injectable fentanyl of the periods November-December 2023 and February-March of 2024, without having evidence of the application.

It was even discovered that the drug reception documents had no name or signature of the company personnel that delivered them and the annexes did not present an autograph, but digital signature.