Thailand's DSI Finds Prescriptions Abused In Civil Service Health Scheme

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DSI finds prescriptions abused in civil service health scheme

Piyanuch Thamnukasetchai

The Nation

BANGKOK: -- The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) and the Finance Ministry have uncovered corruption in the dispensing of medicine to members of the civil service healthcare scheme, officials said.

They vowed that those who seek multiple prescriptions to go "drug-shopping", and doctors who write frivolous prescriptions in return for benefits from drug companies, would be punished under the criminal and disciplinary codes.

A probe begun last year turned up five main irregularities, DSI chief Tharit Pengdit told a news conference yesterday. The irregularities are: financial records submitted by hospitals to the Comptroller-General's Department that don't match billing information in the hospitals' databases; discrepancies between the handwriting in some patients' files and that on corresponding prescriptions; patient histories showing inflated numbers of hospital visits; prescriptions that aren't relevant to a patient's diagnosis, or that are written for patients not covered by the health plan; and overly large prescriptions.

Tharit said investigators had divided the wrongdoings into three categories.

The first is the accessing of medical services under a false name.

The second is the dispensing of unnecessary or irrelevant drugs to patients, or the dispensing of expensive medications not on the main list of drugs, to reap benefits from pharmaceutical companies in the form of commission fees or trips abroad. The DSI has sent these cases to the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

The third category is the deliberate seeking by subscribers of treatment at several hospitals at about the same time in order to get multiple prescriptions (so-called "drug-shopping"), for the purpose of giving or selling medicines to others. Tharit said the DSI would gather evidence to propose this form of corruption as a special case, as it was unrelated to the siphoning of cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, which is currently the focus of another DSI probe.

Supa Piyajitti, seputy permanent secretary for the Finance Ministry, said the efforts to crack down on these activities had reduced the health scheme's medical bills to Bt61.5 billion in 2011 from Bt62.2 billion. The agencies aimed to lower the costs by a further Bt5 billion this year.

She said officials involved in "drug-shopping" would be asked to return any money made and would face disciplinary punishment and prosecution under the criminal code. Officials' relatives involved in the activity would be asked to return the money, face criminal prosecution and see their civil service welfare benefits revoked.

Next month, the Finance Ministry plans to warn civil-service welfare subscribers officially that they face having their benefits revoked if they engage in wrongdoing, she said, adding that a regulation requiring patients to limit treatments for a specific condition to a single hospital would soon be implemented.

The ministry proposed that the prime minister establish stricter codes governing the dispensing of medicines to ensure greater controls and better assessment of the country's medicine use, she added.

Meanwhile, Rural Doctors Society chairman Dr Kriengsak Vacharanukulkieti yesterday urged the DSI to conduct an in-depth investigation fairly and speedily, without discrimination, into the pseudoephedrine scandal and focus on punishing major players while protecting lower-ranking officials who cooperate as witnesses.

His group believed this case involves senior officials, politicians, and those close to them, but it is not confident in the Public Health Ministry's probe and disciplinary punishments for the officials involved. He urged the DSI to send representatives to the ministry's disciplinary probe committee.

In related news, Si Sa Ket Governor Pratheep Kiratirekha said Phusing Hospital's disciplinary probe into 250,000 missing tablets of pseudoephedrine-containing medicine was complete and had been submitted to the permanent secretary for the Public Health Ministry. They found three people were involved, including the hospital's pharmacist.

There was no evidence of the drug being sent to soldiers guarding the Thai-Cambodian border, as had been claimed.

-- The Nation 2012-04-03

[belg]

for anything and everything in this country, doctors prescribe 2-3 days worth of antibiotics...even for a common flue...

no use at all as you do not cure flue with antibiotics, you will get resistance to the drugs

the private hospitals should be renamed commercial hospitals... normal price x 3 - 5 and they do not practise medicine, they practise selling

hypocrate oat became hypocrite self serving

[Thai at Heart]

Doctors are at it, now the civil service is at it. What next, actually they may find a politician is at it!

Shock horror, teachers, administrators, secratery's doctors; the all seeing, omniscient, those who shall be obeyed are on the lam? Surely not.

[walterego]

Not only that but many of the antibiotics I have been given recently are black listed from the FDA and not available in Aus (my home country either). Due to tendon ruptures and other possible dangerous complications. They are mighty handy if ever there is an Anthrax scare.