Police in Vietnam’s capital city of Hanoi Aug 7 decided to investigate a case of duplicating 1,000 blood test results for different patients at a local hospital after a letter of denunciation from a hospital staff, state media reported. The test results were given to around 2,000 patients from July 2012 to May 2013 at Hoai Duc General Hospital in the outlying district of Hoai Duc. Each test result was used for between 2-5 patients. In a letter from Dr. Hoang Thi Nguyet who had worked for more than 20 years in the hospital laboratory, she said that Nguyen Tri Liem, director of the hospital, allowed unprofessional health workers to conduct blood tests, who were in charge of testing between 200-300 patients each day, leading to the duplicated results. Health experts said blood tests play an important role in helping doctors diagnose disease diagnosis and figure out treatment, and thus, to use test results from one patient for another was unacceptable. A team from the Health Ministry and the municipal Health Department met with hospital leaders to discuss the case on Aug 6. Eight out of 10 health workers from the hospital allegedly admitted the malpractice. Head of the Vietnam Social Insurance Department of Health Insurance Policy Implementation Pham Luong Son said that the main goal of their actions was to squeeze money out of the health insurance fund by duplicating results for different patients as most of the patients were health insurance holders. The hospital board yesterday suspended Vuong Thi Kim Thanh as head of the hospital’s laboratory and Phan Thi Oanh as chief technician from work for further investigation. (Ha Noi Moi –New Hanoi Aug 8 p1, http://vnexpress.net [1] Aug 7)
