Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor’s Office is inspecting the financial books of the private health care provider My Clinic, General Hospital Prim. Dr. Abdulah Nakaš and Medical School in Sarajevo.
Prosecutors launched an investigation after CIN published investigative stories about contracts for tissue analysis which the General Hospital entered into with Dr. Emir Talirević’s private clinic.
The CIN’s investigation found that the General Hospital stopped providing histopathological analysis after Sebija Izetbegović was appointed the general manager. Instead, the hospital outsourced testing to Talirević’s private clinic which did the work for nearly triple the old price – for around 550,000 KM a year. Talirević is an old friend Izetbegović’s.
At the time, the general hospital rented 754,5 square meters of its premises to My Clinic. The space needed some reconstruction, so the hospital and My Clinic agreed to do it jointly. The hospital invested nearly 63,000 KM. The paperwork that CIN received did not specify what My Clinic invested.
The prosecutors wrote to CIN that they were “collecting paperwork and reviewing statements about the rent of premises, histopathological testing and other things.”
Until 2010, pathology was exclusively the domain of public health care providers. Sarajevo-based Clinical Center, Medical School and General Hospital had the staff and equipment.
The Pathology Institute of the Sarajevo School of Medicine did histopathological analysis for the Clinical Center of Sarajevo University (KCUS) until 2005 when the Center developed its resources to do it independently.
Amendments in 2010 to the Law on Health Care of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) gave private clinics license to do histopathology. Soon after, My Clinic put this activity into its incorporation form.
My Clinic’s owner Emir Talirević. (Photo: CIN)My Clinic got the first contract for histopathological services from KCUS at the time when Faris Gavrankapetanović was at its helm. Talirević said that no tender was put out for this contract and called it a pilot project worth 6,000 KM. However, the project did not continue because Gavrankapetanović left KCUS, and new management did not extend Talirević’s contract.
When Gavrankapetanović took over as head of the Sarajevo Canton Health Care Fund, he made it impossible for publicly owned institutions to bid to provide biopsies and tumor markers detection. Talirević’s clinic was the only private health care provider that was licenced for this type of testing in the Sarajevo Canton.
Since he had no competition, Talirević easily won bids the Histopathology Institute put out in 2012 and 2013. During three years of providing histopathological services, My Clinic collected nearly 1.8 million KM from the Fund, even though it charged for come services cheaper than the General Hospital.
Talirević said that his prices changed depending on a client, the scope of a contract and the type of testing needed.
