The widespread use of kickbacks has been uncovered in hospitals in a corruption scandal in one Chinese province. The kickbacks involved large numbers of staff and resulted in the over prescription of drugs.
Sixteen directors and six deputy directors of hospitals in Anhui Province in eastern China, were removed because of corruption in 2014, according to the Chinese regime mouthpiece Xinhua.net on Feb. 9. The corruption probe into the province’s hospitals resulted in 108 cases involving a total of 123 people.
The directors got kickbacks from drug companies, medical equipment manufacturers, and construction companies.
Once a director was corrupt, no one in the hospital was likely to be clean, since the process of getting kickbacks often involved multiple departments within a hospital, according to Xinhua.
Liu Huading, the director of the Fu Yang Cancer Hospital, was encouraged by the drug provider to increase the use of chemotherapy drug fluorouracil. He was paid 60 yuan (about US$9.61) for every syringe of the drug used in the hospital. Liu eventually got a total 90,000 yuan (about US$14,409) in kickbacks.
In another case, Guo Jingli, the deputy director of the Linquan County People’s Hospital, was bribed 1.32 million yuan (about $211,387) by a supplier to name it the exclusive provider of a bone stabilizing material.