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Taipei City slams DOH ruling

Unhappy with the Department of Health's (DOH) decision to give only warnings to two Taipei Municipal Jen Ai Hospital doctors for their mistreatment of a four-year old girl who later died, the Taipei City Government wants the department to reopen the case.

The city government's doctor discipline review committee ordered Dr. Lin Chih-nan (林致男) to stop practicing for six months and handed a three-month suspension to Dr. Liu Chi-hua (劉奇樺). Both were ordered to take continuing education courses for a year.

Lin and Liu appealed the committee's findings and its ruling.

The department's retrial committee revoked the city disciplinary group's ruling. It warned both doctors and ordered just 20 hours of continuing education for Lin and 40 hours for Liu.

Taipei City's own Department of Health yesterday questioned the retrial committee's decision, saying it had overlooked the seriousness of the case and blamed the errors in the case on the hospital, not the doctors.

"The two doctors' performances have everything to do with personal morals. You can't impute their faults to the poor management of the hospital. The latest ruling is against medical ethics and social justice," said Deng Su-wen (鄧素文), deputy chief of Taipei's Department of Health yesterday.

Deng said city officials hope to send a retrial request to the DOH by the end of this week.

According to the retrial committee, Lin was a resident in his "learning phase."

When the four-year-old girl, surnamed Chiu, who had been badly beaten by her father, was sent to the hospital for emergency treatment in January, Lin did not break the hospital's rules by staying in his room instead of giving a medical consultation, the committee said.

It was also not Lin's fault that Jen Ai Hospital couldn't treat the girl, the committee said.

Deng said the department and the city government couldn't understand DOH's decision to ascribe all the faults to the hospital, and let off the doctors whose ignorance and lies caused the loss of a life.

Chen Chin-hsiu (陳清秀), commissioner of the commission, said that the law regulated that doctors should give medical consultation in person unless they are not on-site.

"It was Lin's professional error not to show up when he was in the hospital that night. I think it is inappropriate for the retrial committee to see it as poor training given by the hospital," he said.

Liu and Lin had refused to treat the girl and had her transferred to a Taichung County hospital, where she later died.

The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office indicted the pair last month on charges of "professional error leading to the death" and "forgery of public documents."

Both Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Deputy Mayor Yeh Chin-chuan (葉金川) agreed at yesterday's municipal meeting that the DOH's administrative disciplinary action was inappropriate. Ma ordered the Land and Regulation Commission to gather more evidence to back the city's request for a retrial, according to Deng.

The DOH said yesterday that the retrial committee's decision had not been made lightly, and that both Lin and the city government's opinions were included in the decision-making process.

It said that the purpose of the administrative disciplinary action was to correct the doctors' behavior, not to force them out of business.
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