The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday urged the Ministry of Health and Welfare to include a whistle-blower policy in the Medical Care Act (醫療法) and to strengthen punishment against public hospital doctors engaging in corruption, in response to a recent suspected case of medical equipment sales kickbacks involving several renowned doctors.
“Running a medical practice requires a special set of professional knowledge and skills. It is not an area an outsider can easily understand, making it a hub of corruption and irregularity,” DPP Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉) said at a press conference in Taipei yesterday morning.
Unless the ministry tackles the problem through reinforced regulations, graft cases, such as the one implicating Taichung Veterans General Hospital and another involving two regional medical centers run by the ministry would be an ongoing issue, Chiu said.
The lawmaker was referring to discoveries made by the Agency Against Corruption earlier this week.
Taichung Veterans General Hospital head of urology Ou Yen-chuan (歐宴泉), former Changhua Hospital Department of Urology director Chou Hsin-pei (周欣霈) and Nantou Hospital urologist Wen-hsu (林紋旭) allegedly colluded with a medical equipment supplier to rig bids, for which they allegedly received kickbacks.
Taichung Veterans General Hospital neurosurgery head Shen Chiung-chyi (沈炯祺) also allegedly falsified patients’ surgical records in an attempt to swindle reward money from the hospital, according to an agency report.
Chiu said both the Labor Inspection Act (勞動檢查法) and the Corporate Governance Best Practice Principles for TWSE/GTSM Listed Companies (上市上櫃公司治理實務守則) include a policy that protects the identity and employment of whistle-blowers.
“However, such a policy is still lacking in the Medical Care Act, making medical personnel less likely to report irregularities at the hospitals where they work, especially those committed by their superiors,” Chiu said.
The legislator also said a reward system should be established for whistle-blowers in the medical industry and stiffer punishments against doctors who use their positions for personal gain, particularly those working at public hospitals.
In response, Department of Medical Affairs official Liu Yu-ching (劉玉菁) said it would pose a legal problem if the government was to impose heavier penalties on corrupt doctors working at public hospitals than those employed by private medical organizations.
“Both public and private hospitals should be equal before the law. Also, the Medical Care Act regulates the actions of medical institutions rather than individual doctors,” Liu said.
Agency Against Corruption official Tsai Min-feng (蔡旻峰) said the Ministry of Justice has drawn up a whistle-blower protection act for public-sector workers and has referred it to the Executive Yuan for deliberation.
“As for private-sector employees, we believe it is more feasible for each industry’s authorities to incorporate their own whistle-blower protection clause into the acts governing their industries, rather than leaving it to the central government to draw up a law that applies in every situation,” Tsai said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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