GHS doctor faces fraud prosecution

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A doctor in Cyprus registered with the General Health System will be prosecuted for filing payment requests for services he never provided, Attorney General George Savvides said on Wednesday.

In a statement to the press, the AG said that following a police investigation into the doctor’s logs, evidence emerged warranting the doctor’s prosecution.

The police had been called in by the Attorney General to investigate a number of complaints from patients claiming that the physician had been logging in services which they had not received.

“From the investigations that followed, it became clear that payments were requested for a series of health services, which were logged on the system without being provided to patients,” said the AG’s announcement.

As the AG noted, “evidence suggests the doctor could have committed crimes of corruption, money laundering, preparation of documents without authority, falsifying records, fraud and embezzlement of property with false representations”.

Scathing report

The legal chief’s decision comes days after the island’s audit office released a scathing report on a slew of illegalities within Cyprus’ healthcare system.

The state auditor’s report said that some specialist doctors are becoming richer by more than €600,000 each a year on the back of the GHS.

According to the report, a specialist doctor was compensated with a whopping €870,742 in 2020 for outpatient services, while 11 specialists had an income of over €500,000.

At the same time, the earnings of one individual GP for children reached €421,283, while 67 specialist doctors had annual earnings over €300,000.

The audit office also reported on a married couple of gynaecologists who received €1.4 mln for outpatient services offered to GHS beneficiaries.