A SENIOR doctor with the emergency department of Longhua People’s Hospital has accused doctors in the hospital’s 12 medical departments of illegally taking kickbacks from pharmaceutical salespeople in return for prescribing designated medicines and purchasing medical materials, according to a report on sznews.com Thursday.

The senior doctor, identified in the sznews.com report as Gao, claimed the departments in question included anesthesiology, emergency room, radiology and surgery. Gao also claimed he had collected a lot of evidence.

Two video clips, which the sznews.com report claimed were provided by Gao, showed a man passing several envelopes to doctors around him in an office of the anesthesiology department. The report said all the people in the video clips are doctors.

Gao told the report that the video clips were recorded Feb. 12 this year. The man who was passing envelopes to the people was the chief resident doctor of the hospital. He was sharing kickbacks with other doctors of the anesthesiology department.

Gao claimed that one of the doctors in his department came forward to him last week after receiving kickbacks from a pharmaceutical salesperson. The doctor, whom Gao didn’t identify, said the pharmaceutical salesperson gave him six envelopes, each of which contained 2,000 yuan (US$296), as part of the kickbacks of the drugs.

Gao produced two records which contained dates, drugs prescribed, medical materials and signatures of doctors, according to the report. Gao said the kickbacks were given to doctors according to the records. Gao’s claims echoed another doctor with the anesthesiology department, who refused to be named.

Another unidentified doctor in the Emergency Room claimed that doctors would earn commissions ranging from thousands of yuan to tens of thousands  of yuan each month depending on the amount of medicine and consumptive materials they prescribe.

Gao claimed this practice had existed for years. He told media outlets that the whistleblowing resulted from his dissatisfaction with the hospital management after he was suspended for an investigation for seven months. He returned to his job recently.

The hospital said Gao was punished for embezzlement while he was head of the emergency department, nevertheless an investigation has started into Gao’s accusations.

(Han Ximin)