Department of Health (DOH) officials faced pressure in the legislature yesterday after a sitting originally called to discuss an act governing the creation of a genome bank turned into a grilling over the department’s handling of doctors that were found to have colluded with patients to defraud NT$80 million (US$2.5 million) from the National Health Insurance system.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Lin Hong-chi (林鴻池) and Ho Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳) said the DOH should step up its supervision of doctors practicing in public hospitals, adding that the standards of the medical profession were in decline.
“There have been many recent problems in the [profession] … [The DOH] needs to weed out the bad doctors,” Lin said. “The doctors that brought disgrace to the profession need to be severely punished and the DOH should step up its efforts to ensure that it does not happen again.”
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
He was referring to a case in which three doctors — Yang Chao-jan (楊超然), a physician at the DOH-run Keelung Hospital; Lai Teh-hsing (賴德興), a surgeon at Yee Zen General Hospital in Taoyuan County; and Wu Kuo-ching (吳國精), a surgeon at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Yunlin County — have been charged with fraud after allegedly colluding with patients to defraud insurance companies. The Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office also brought fraud charges against seven other individuals who allegedly acted as “patients.”
The doctors’ licenses to practice were revoked after evidence was seized by law-enforcement personnel and they confessed to colluding with a fraud ring since 2003 and falsifying treatment records and surgery reports to claim cancer payments from life insurance companies, the department said.
DOH officials defended the agency, saying they believed it had handled the matter promptly and properly.
Meanwhile, DOH Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) said the department would order the hospitals involved to suspend operations if they are found to have concealed information about illegal conduct by their doctors.
Four doctors practicing at other hospitals were also listed as suspects, Yaung said.
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