Region Uppsala breached the law on public procurement by directly extending a contract regarding rental doctors and nurses last autumn, according to the Competition Authority.
The Authority has now turned to the Administrative Court and is demanding that the region pay eight million kronor in procurement fine, a kind of fine to the state.
The procurement, which was made while waiting for a nationally procured framework agreement to come into effect, was valued at 246 million kronor. Region Uppsala claims that there was an urgent need to cover healthcare needs, and that it was therefore possible to make an exception with the support of the rules.
However, according to the Competition Authority, there was no particular urgency. "Procuring authorities must continuously evaluate and reassess their needs to avoid getting into too much of a hurry with their purchases", writes the Competition Authority's Director-General Rikard Jermsten in a press release.
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