DOCTORS at several public hospitals in the city have been accused of colluding with middlemen to help clients illegally cash out their public medical insurance accounts, according to yesterday’s Southern Metropolis Daily whose reporters carried out a monthlong investigation.

    The accused doctors allegedly forged fake medical records and prescriptions to help middlemen earn profits by reselling medications prescribed for their clients who in fact were not sick but intended to cash out money from their medical insurance accounts. The doctors received commissions in return, the news report said. According to the middlemen, the number of doctors who receive unspecified commissions for the filthy business is not a small figure.

    According to the report, a client could only get 50 percent of the amount of the money he/she had cashed out from his/her medical insurance account.

    For example, a client who paid 1,000 yuan (US$145) with his medical insurance card for the illegally prescribed medication, would get 500 yuan from a middleman, who would then sell the medications.

    Clients could either go to a hospital in person to buy the medicine or just give a broker their medical insurance cards and receive the money when the trades were done.

    In the morning of March 21, a reporter with the Daily met a middleman, identified as Xiaolin, at Shenzhen No. 3 People’s Hospital in Longgang District. Xiaolin told the reporter to register to see a doctor named Cui Jianjun at the hepatopathy department with his medical insurance card.

    Before entering the doctor’s office, Xiaolin handed a fake prescription to the reporter that said that the patient needed five boxes of Sebivo.

    Cui first refused the reporter’s request to pay for the five boxes of Sebivo with his medical insurance card but agreed to do so after meeting Xiaolin who had been waiting outside Cui’s office. The reporter was able to pay 399.54 yuan for the drugs with his medical insurance card and gave them to Xiaolin in exchange for 200 yuan cash. Xiaolin said that he had ways to resell the medication because the prescribed medications were in huge demand.

    Similar deals have also happened at other public hospitals.

    Chen Qiming with Shenzhen People’s Hospital, another doctor identified only as An with Nanshan People’s Hospital and Cui have been suspended from their posts, according to press releases by the hospitals yesterday. (Zhang Qian)