Health care, "thank you" gifts and corruption

[Martinus]

Today, a court in Poland has sentenced a famous surgeon to a fine and a short suspended prison sentence for accepting bribes from patients. The doctor was running a public health care heart clinic and was also actively operating. All questionable incidents included envelopes with amounts of money ranging from app. $50 to $1000, given post factum, to express gratitude for succesfully operating the patient. At the same time the court has found that non-cash gifts (such as a bottle of expensive cognac or a box of chocolates) that the doctor received were not bribes and they were customary in such situations.

So my question to you guys is - how stuff like this is perceived in your country (considering Poland has a bit of corruption tradition, I expect this to be viewed more strictly than it is in Poland).

[Syt]

What would be the name of said surgeon?

[Martinus]

What would be the name of said surgeon?

If you are asking, you are probably thinking about the guy in question as he is operating abroad now. His first name is Miroslaw and his last name starts with G. (Polish press law requires that names of suspects and sentenced people are shortened unless the court orders their publication, but I could probably google it up if you need it, as he was the head of a prominent clinic some time ago).

[Martinus]

The last name is Garlicki.

[Tamas]

Garlicki.

Polish is hillarious

[Tamas]

And it is pretty much the norm here.

If you ever need  medical care in this country, make sure to slip some cash to the doctor, to the nurses if you are in hospital, etc. It is expected and a lot of them handles you with great disrespect if you don't pay. They do earn shitty wages though.

[The Brain]

This seems to be strictly a Third World problem.

[Syt]

The last name is Garlicki.

Nah, doesn't ring a bell. When I was still working for the pharma research company we would get requests a few times a year to document all payments made for the past x years to certain doctors in Eastern Europe because there were allegations of corruption against them. Once we were asked to work with prosecution in Poland because some hospitals were suspected to bill both us and the health insurances for their services.

Fortunately, our company was pretty strict on not participating in such practices, though we did work with some of the doctors in question (one Serbian doctor later hung himself before appearing in court) - in some cases we actually withdrew a study from doctors for ethical reasons, and we had an annual training about what not to do.

[Zanza]

Older patients sometimes give the nurses 10 Euro or a box of chocolates when spending time in the hospital. Not the doctors though.

There was a huge scandal about doctors accepting bribes to move people forward on transplantation waiting lists recently. I am sure people will go to prison for that.

[Martinus]

Older patients sometimes give the nurses 10 Euro or a box of chocolates when spending time in the hospital.

There was a huge scandal about doctors accepting bribes to move people forward on transplantation waiting lists recently. I am sure people will go to prison for that.

Was the scandal in the Eastern or the Western part?

[Zanza]

They found the first cases in Lower Saxony. Then they started to review all transplantation programs in Germany and found cases in Bavaria and Saxony. I am sure those won't be the last. However, all of them seem to be unrelated, so there is no transplant mafia.

The first guy they found got a bonus of 2000 Euro per liver transplant in his work contract, which is a nice sum of money when you do 40 per year. So he had a monetary incentive, but not directly from the patients.

I just read an article about it and it is apparently not clear whether they even got money for it, most likely not. In some cases it looks like they falsified the data so a patient with reasonably good health has a better chance to get an organ before deterioration without the patient even knowing, e.g. by claiming the patient needs dialysis when he actually doesn't.

The system as it is gives organs to the most ill patients and that's quite controversial among doctors as some would prefer to give them to those that have the best chance of getting healthy again.

[Brazen]

I used to live with a ward sister who'd regularly bring home flowers and boxes of chocolates from grateful patients. She also met rich boyfriends through work and used to hang out on Simon Le Bon's yacht at the weekend. I've never heard of doctors receiving bribes, but there was a recent scandal about Muslim doctors being paid to help to arrange illegal female circumcisions 

[Monoriu]

In the past, such gifts or bribes were very common in HK.  In fact they were "required" if you wish to have a successful visit to the clinic/hospital.  That was 40 or 50 years ago.  The government ruthlessly stopped such practices starting from the 70s.  Any gift to medical staff, in cash or otherwise, are considered bribes.  There are heavy prison sentences if you accept them.  Of course, another effective measure was to raise civil service salary. 

Nowadays it is very rare to provide gifts to medical staff.  Probably the only people who do it are recent immigrants or tourists from the mainland, where such practices are still common. 

[HVC]

i don't get how it's a bribe if it's after the fact. Unless it was a wink wink sort of way to try to get around the bribe. ie it was set up before the operation but paid out after the operation. it's also weird to distinguish between cah and non-cash. i mean, what the difference between getting 300 dollars or a 300 dollar bottle of cognac.

[Monoriu]

I think gifts with nominal value, like a card, some flowers or snacks for immediate consumption are in practice ok.  A bottle of cognac is definitely not.