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BRASILIA – The Federal Public Ministry (MPF) in Rio Grande do Sul and the Public Ministry with the Federal Court of Audit (MP-TCU) initiated investigations to investigate signs of irregularities in a contract between the Ministry of Health and the company Topmed Assistência Hospitalar. The company was hired to provide the call center service for the new coronavirus. Suspicions are that the contract was too expensive and that the company could not meet the contracted demand.
Topmed was the first company hired without an offer by the Ministry of Health after the emergency was declared due to the new coronavirus in February. The contract, in the amount of R $ 144 million, foresees that the company will make or answer 6.7 million telephone calls to the advisory, information, monitoring and triage services of Covid-19 for suspicious cases.
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The service is performed by health professionals hired to work remotely or in person in different parts of Brazil.
According to the representation presented by the MP-TCU, there are indications that the amounts contracted were too expensive. According to the representation, the cost per service was estimated at R $ 5.8, but throughout the process, the price was later estimated at R $ 21.
For the attorney responsible for representation, Marinus Marsico, the evidence of overpricing is strong.
– What we noticed is that the price setting to be paid by the government was at the mercy of the price offered by the company. There was no significant negotiation to reduce the price. Furthermore, there is no justification for the estimated price, which was R $ 5.8 per service, to increase to more than R $ 20, the prosecutor said.
In Rio Grande do Sul, the Federal Public Ministry is investigating a complaint that the contracted company will not provide the services contracted by the government.
According to an anonymous complaint, two weeks after the start of the service, a large number of employees had been fired, which would avoid the demand contracted by the company government.
GLOBO located the person who filed the complaint against the company. He is a professional in the field of nursing. In the report, she elaborated on what she reported to the MPF.
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– Two weeks after starting work, I was informed by email of my completion. I started talking to colleagues and came to the conclusion that at the same time, at least 300 people had also been fired. They didn’t cancel our job card because they can therefore show the government that they have an adequate number of attendees, he said.
– To receive, the company needs to send reports on the total number of calls we receive or make. But with so many fewer people, there would be no way to fulfill the contract, he said.
The prosecutor responsible for the case, Enrico Rodrigues de Freitas, said that he requested information about the contract from the Ministry of Health.
– The investigations are still in the preliminary phase, but I have already requested documents about the contract and about the number of people who should work in the service of the Ministry of Health. attorney.
Documents show government has not contacted competitors
The documents that supported the hiring of Topmed Assistance obtained by O GLOBO show that the ministry chose the company without having evaluated the proposals of the competitors, violating the recommendations of the Federal Court of Audit (TCU). anything.
The ministry team recommended hiring the company as the only one in Brazil capable of performing the service, but entrepreneurs in the telemarketing sector heard by O GLOBO say that there are at least 10 other competitors with technical and operational capacity to do the same. job.
To avoid damage to public coffers, TCU recommends that, even in the process of waiving bidding processes, agencies have at least three quotes for the service or material they wish to contract.
The idea is that, with appointments, the government can choose the most advantageous proposals. This recommendation is contained in at least two manuals edited by TCU to guide public managers to properly carry out the hiring.
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One of the documents obtained by GLOBO was the preliminary study carried out by the ministry, presenting justifications to contract the service and to choose the provider company.
In it, the technical team of the Ministry’s Primary Health Care Secretariat justifies the need for the government to offer the service, indicating, among other things, that a similar model was already being adopted in Portugal and the United Kingdom.
The document makes an express recommendation to hire Topmed on the grounds that, until then, no other company capable of offering the same service had been found.
“Currently, no other company has been found in the national territory that provides preclinical care with a set of algorithms in a format correlated with those used in the United Kingdom and Portugal and monitoring at a later distance,” says the document. .
In another document, the team corrects the information and claims that it tried to search for competitors, but says that the search was unsuccessful because the site used did not work.
Luciana Laurreti is president of AzimuteMed, a company that operates in the health call center service. The company serves clients such as pharmaceutical companies and operators such as SulAmérica and Unimed Seguros. According to her, the statement that only Topmed could execute the contract does not reflect the reality of the market.
– In Brazil, there are at least 10 companies capable of carrying out what the Ministry of Health hired, companies with the latest technology and some that are part of foreign groups and perform the same service. It is very strange that the government says it has not found another one, said the executive.
Fábio Abreu is the founder of Axismed, which also operates in the call center sector and which today belongs to the Telefónica Group. He agrees with Luciana and says that the Brazilian market would have other companies capable of performing the same service and that the government could have consulted.
– In mid-2011, I myself implemented a system using algorithms based on the UK model. I do not understand why the government declared that there are no other companies in the market – said the businessman.
Attorney Marinus Marsico states that there are signs of hiring direction.
– The justifications presented for the non-presentation of competing offers and the way in which the contracting was carried out, at the touch of a box, show that there are strong indications of direction – said the prosecutor.
Wanted, Topmed said he was not aware of the ongoing investigations in Rio Grande do Sul. Regarding the representation presented by the Public Ministry to TCU, the company has not yet spoken to O GLOBO.
By means of a note, the Ministry of Health said that “it has not received any notification from the Federal Public Ministry or the Federal Court of Accounts about the services of TeleSUS” and that TCU and the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) have been ” tracking all pandemic related hires. ”
