IT HAS not been a good week for the medical profession. The Auditor General’s report, discussed at the legislature on Tuesday, noted that some doctors at state hospitals were doubling their annual pay through over-time work. The suggestion was that they were scheduling work, which could have been done in normal hours, in the afternoons and at weekends in order to claim overtime. Result was that some doctors were doubling their pay, taking home €200,000 a year.
These revelations were followed by press reports yesterday alleging that some doctors were making up names of patients they supposedly treated and claiming overtime pay. These were blatant cases of fraud that cannot be dealt with by the internal inquiries ordered by the health minister. They should be the subject of a police investigation. This was not all. On a television show, a state doctor was accused by a colleague of being given a seaside apartment by a patient he had been looking after for nine months.
The latter allegation would fall in the undeclared income category of offence that is frequently attributed to doctors. Doctors are regularly accused of tax evasion, which is why the government has a provision in the 2012 budget, for VAT to be charged by doctors in the private sector. The finance ministry hopes that by making doctors charge VAT, Inland Revenue would have a better indication of what each doctor earns. But this is assuming that patients would be issued a receipt in the first place.
We have not been treated to a very flattering picture of the medical profession in the last few days. Some doctors have been shown to be greedy, law-breaking cheats, raising serious questions about the advice and treatment they give patients.
Does a doctor always advise what is in the best interest of the patient or in the best interest of his pocket? Is the ease with which a doctor recommends a costly MRI scan, in the interest of the patient, or is he thinking about the commission he will get for his referral? Is the ridiculously long sick leave a doctor recommends for a patient an honest decision or a way of keeping the paying customer happy?
The question more and more people would be asking, especially after the latest revelations, is whether their doctor can be trusted? Although we should avoid generalisations, the truth is that no longer will people be able to show complete deference and respect to a doctor and accept his word as gospel. The idea of the morally upstanding, respectable doctor, for whom the interest of his patient is of paramount importance, has been shattered this week.
