Clinics accused of issuing fake death certificates for pay

A Taipei city councilor yesterday accused four clinics in the city of issuing fake death certificates for hefty profits.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Councilor Wang Hao (王浩) held a press conference to air his allegations, expressing concern that fraudulent death certificates might be used to swindle money from insurance companies or to help murderers escape justice by faking their own deaths.

"Doctors are supposed to save lives," Wang said.

"It is so ironic that some doctors have profited enormously by selling death certificates," Wang said.

Wang said that some of the clinics certified by the Bureau of Health to issue death certificates have issued an abnormally large number over the last two years.

Wang said that he had analyzed data from the city's Office of Funeral Management (殯葬處) -- and had encountered data that he found incredible.

"It is surprising that inconspicuous clinics could earn millions of dollars by selling death certificates," he said.

Wang said that Hong-Jen Clinic (宏仁診所) in Neihu has brought in about NT$8 million over the past two years by issuing 3,089 death certificates.

According to Wang, the number of death certificates issued by the clinic far exceeds the number issued by Veterans General Hospital or National Taiwan University Hospital -- which are the two largest hospitals in the nation.

Wang said that doctors charge NT$2,500 for each certificate -- a price set by the Department of Health.

Wang said that the most suspicious statistic about Hong-Jen was that the clinic had issued 184 death certificates in February alone -- and in 65 of those cases, the cause of death was listed as arhythmia.

A practitioner at the clinic, surnamed Wu (吳), denied Wang's accusations, saying that he had never violated the law.

He added that doctors at clinics need to survive somehow because they have had fewer and fewer patients in recent years.