The way equipment is ordered at the LBJ hospital in American Samoa is to be looked at after concerns were raised over patients having to travel off island for accurate cardiogram tests.
The supervisor of LBJ's Cardiac Lab, Fiso Avegalio, says numerous requests for new ECG machines to the hospital's equipment committee have been ignored over the last four years.
He says the existing machines, which are used to evaluate symptoms of heart disease, had been in use for ten years, there were no spare parts, and they were giving false information.
Our correspondent, Monica Miller, says four new machines have now been ordered but the process will also be looked at.
"The CEO of the hospital, who's only been in the job for maybe six, seven months, says that there's no need for that committee as long as the equipment is budgetted for, that the purchase should be approved right away so that's something that he says he's going to have to look at."
Monica Miller.
