The government will move to stamp out so-called "fake treatment," including excessive prescriptions of narcotics, falsifying medical records, and inducing unnecessary hospitalization. The scope will include not only legal violations but also immoral medical practices by medical professionals.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare said on the 10th it will operate an "abnormal and fake treatment administrative investigation team" starting on the 15th. The team will investigate improper and illegal medical practices that the medical community and patient groups have continuously raised as problems.
Those surveyed first will include cases in which patients are admitted on the condition of receiving injections whose medical effectiveness has not been proven and excessive medical fees are billed; cases of overprescribing narcotics and psychotropic drugs without medical grounds; and cases that caused social controversy due to immoral acts by medical professionals.
Under the current Medical Service Act, diagnosis and prescriptions are recognized as areas of professional judgment by medical professionals. For this reason, critics have said that even if some medical institutions repeatedly engage in inappropriate practices by abusing the purpose of the system, there are limits to administrative sanctions unless a clear legal violation, such as a broker-run hospital, is confirmed.
The ministry plans to examine not only whether related laws and regulations have been violated but also the appropriateness of medical practices in this investigation. In particular, it is reviewing ways to actively apply the "duty to prohibit immoral medical practices by medical professionals" stipulated in the Medical Service Act and its enforcement decree.
The enforcement decree of the Medical Service Act defines academically unrecognized medical practices, immoral medical practices, and excessive treatment such as unnecessary tests, prescriptions, and surgeries as conduct that damages the dignity of medical professionals. If the Minister determines that a case falls under these categories, the minister can impose a license suspension for up to one year.
During the investigation, the ministry will establish a cooperation system with medical associations and reflect their views on matters requiring professional judgment. It said that even if illegality is not clear, if a practice is deemed immoral, it can review administrative sanctions after deliberation by an ethics committee of a medical association.
Recent problem cases include excessive prescriptions of narcotics at patients' request; falsifying medical records to claim indemnity insurance after prescribing anti-obesity drugs; offering money or valuables to attract hemodialysis patients; and inducing admission to long-term care hospitals on the condition of receiving certain non-reimbursable treatments.
If illegal acts such as operating a broker-run hospital or issuing false documents are confirmed during the investigation, the ministry plans to simultaneously file complaints with or refer the cases to investigative agencies.
Gwak Sun-heon, head of the abnormal and fake treatment administrative investigation team, said, "We will oversee medical settings to ensure that clinics and hospitals providing abnormal care are not recognized as normal medical institutions."