Department of Health

With great fanfare, Francisco Domenech, Puerto Rico’s chief of staff, announced new rules governing lobbying before the island’s government. But a year later, both agencies and lobbyists are flouting the protocol.

Nearly three months after the initial request, four agencies have not provided the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo with communications, investigative files or the names of officials designated under a memorandum issued by the Office of the Chief of Staff.

Most of the "new positions" for specialists announced by the outgoing Secretary of Health are internships for general practitioners and existing positions, rather than new training slots for medical specialists, which are desperately needed to address the service crisis on the island.

Seven years after the deaths caused by Hurricane María, the Puerto Rican government has yet to agree on a comprehensive plan to identify and mobilize electricity-dependent individuals during disasters like Tropical Storm Ernesto. The Governor now insists that such a registry must be created.

The government of Puerto Rico and the Department of Health suffered a judicial defeat in their attempt to stop the lawsuit for damages filed by Jaideliz Moreno Ventura’s family after the 13-year-old teenager’s death on the island municipality of Vieques, due to lack of medical services.

Incomplete data on deaths from the last two years that the Demographic Registry delivered to the Center for Investigative Journalism prompted this organization to again sue Health Secretary Carlos Mellado López and the registry´s  Director Wanda Llovet Díaz.

A small tech company called SupportPR, owned by a donor and collaborator of Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, has controlled and set the hiring guidelines for tech jobs at the Department of Health since the pandemic that has exceeded $144 million.

The day before Hurricane Fiona made landfall, Petra Rodríguez tried to turn on the power generator she had just bought, but it arrived damaged. She needed electricity to power the electric pump with which she feeds her 93-year-old mother, who is bedridden, and to operate the adjustable bed and inflatable mattress, which keep her from […]

The Department of Health, responsible for inspecting and approving the emergency evacuation plans of all the island’s hospitals, only keeps them for the three hospitals that it runs. The agency’s Deputy Secretary’s Office for the Regulation and Accreditation of Health Facilities (SARAFS, in Spanish) does not keep a copy of the evacuation plans that it […]