Paying Kickbacks In Private Healthcare Clinics

ST 200419

Last year, we wrote about three local hospitals paying kickbacks to foreign medical agents to introduce patients from overseas who were seeking treatment.

After the Ministry of Health (MOH) outlawed this practice of paying fees to foreign agents, there's information to suggest that these mercenary agents have changed their focus to target private hospitals and doctors who work in private practice.

There is also evidence to suggest that local agents may actually be staff working in the private hospitals. They could be local Singapore staff or foreign staff working in our private hospitals. The foreign staff would be in a good position to discuss kickback fees on behalf of foreign agents.

These agents not only wanted a fixed retainer fee ($10,000), they also wanted to be paid a percentage of medical charges, which is banned under present guidelines. Apparently these rogue agents "shop around" and choose doctors who pay them the highest commissions.

For we all know, this practice of paying under-table payments/ kickbacks may have gone on before it started in our public hospitals as it is definitely easier to negotiate with  doctors in private practice and private hospitals.

The newspaper report also suggested that illegal transplant organ services may be touted as well though it wasn't clear if they took place in Singapore.

When kickback schemes like these are in practice, doctors in private practice would likely raise their fees to pay for whatever extra "costs" that are incurred. It is bad practices like this that leads to fee increases, increases in health insurance premiums and Mediasave-approved Integrated shield plans.

Have a look at the article in today's Straits Times on page B2 under the Home section.

Paying Kickbacks In Our Healthcare System

Latest news on the front page of the Sunday Times today revealed that three local hospitals have contracts with foreign agents referring patients from overseas. And this is just the public hospitals. What about the private hospitals?

What was shocking was that the agents received 8 percent of the patient's hospital bill, excluding doctors' fees. If a foreign patient's fees comes up to a hundred thousand dollars, that means the foreign agent who referred the patient pockets $8000. Very profitable indeed.

Today online on 040618

Our health care system has already been rocked by similar unethical news earlier in June this year, when there was an article in the Today online paper regarding Physiotherapists in private practices paying kickbacks to get patients. Subsequently, all physiotherapists received a circular from the Allied Health Professions Council (AHPC) reminding us not to engage in such behavior.

Back in 2016, doctors were not allowed by the Singapore Medical Council  to pay fees to third party administrators as fees were inflated. In fact Fullerton Healthcare's IPO plans went up in smoke after Singapore regulators received many letters outlining concerns regarding their business model of receiving third party administrator fees as the main driver of their revenue. Guess which clinics are owned by Fullerton Healthcare?

It is precisely behavior like this that leads to increases in health insurance fees and our Medisave-approved Integrated shield plans.

There have been rumors about physiotherapists in private practices paying doctors to get patients all along. Include doctors to the list too. Let's hope there is no more unethical behavior regarding healthcare professionals after this.