Corrupt doctors urged to pay back bribes
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-06-07 10:37
Beijing health officials have called on corrupt doctors and other medical
staff to hand over bribes taken from patients or drug companies and are to open
a bank account to deposit the cash, state media said on Wednesday.
The account would open for public scrutiny, the Beijing News said, and
medical workers who had received bribes since 2001 were urged to hand over the
cash.
"Regardless of whether they are common doctors, nurses or hospital
administrators, all who have received discounts or commissions for medicine,
equipment, or other sources of inappropriate income, must hand them in to their
hospital's bribery administration office," the Beijing News quoted the municipal
health bureau as saying.
Bribe-taker blacklists would also be posted publicly and offenders would be
banned from working in hospitals for two years, the paper said.
It did not say how the payments would be enforced or whether health
authorities expected anyone to comply.
Deregulation of China's health-care industry over the decades of economic
reform has resulted in widespread corruption in hospitals scrambling to make up
funding shortfalls.
Hospitals have resorted to charging exorbitant premiums for medical care and
prescriptions, while patients have resorted to bribing doctors to jump lengthy
queues and secure preferential treatment.
China has pledged to clean up the country's ailing health care system which
which remains beyond the means of most citizens.
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