5,000 more ghost patients in medical card scam
Another 5,000 so-called ghost patients have been uncovered in the last month, which means doctors received at least €20m in taxpayers’ money.
On top of this senior Department of Health officials estimate that doctors are still claiming medical card payments for another 2,000 elderly patients who have since died.
Department officials have threatened to recoup the money by whatever means necessary, but doctors say they were not responsible for the €30,000 bogus claims.
Chairman of the Oireachtas Health Committee Batt O’Keeffe yesterday said he would be inviting all the health board chief executives to find out who was responsible for the scandal: “The department and health boards must immediately establish the full cost, which is expected to be well in excess of €20m. I will be calling for immediate accountability by the secretary general of the department.
“It is also essential that procedures are put in place to ensure that such a major and expensive error cannot occur again,” he said.
The number of ghost patients differs considerably depending on the health board area: there are almost 7,000 cases in the Western Health Board, compared with 1,800 in the North Western Health Board and 2,000 in the Midlands Health Board. These cases represent patients who either died, moved away from a health board area or entered long-stay care and did not need a medical card.
Department officials are analysing how long invalid medical cards were being claimed by doctors. This is proving more difficult than envisaged as officials need information detailed enough to withstand a potential legal challenge from doctors.
The cost of the medical card scheme in general has soared following a government decision in advance of last year’s election to offer medical cards to all over-70s.
The department believed the change would cost an extra €19m annually, though the cost spiralled to €51m a year by April 2002.
