No place for corrupt doctors

THE news that investigators working for the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) will be launching a probe into fraudulent sick notes being issued by a Mandeni doctor’s practice, is to be welcomed.

In fact, since the investigators find themselves in Zululand, they will do well to extend their stay and call on other medical practitioners where this kind of fraud is rife.

The Mandeni doctor is by no means an isolated case.

Certainly one doesn’t want to generalise as the majority of general practitioners in Zululand no doubt refuse to compromise their integrity, but unfortunately, as any local business or corporate employer will attest, there are far too many corrupt doctors in and around our city who freely dish out sick notes for a few hundred easy bucks.

Employers mostly know who they are, but the problem is that it is difficult to prove and way too cumbersome to obtain sufficient evidence to make a case and report such offenders.

So the miscreants get away with it in most cases.

While each individual case of employees abusing this practice may seem minor in the grand scheme of things, looking at the collective impact of this kind of fraud paints a more disturbing picture however.

Only serious number crunching will reveal the true extent of such malpractice, but one can safely assume that every year hundreds of thousands of lost man hours cause considerable damage to the local economy. Converting this into monetary value will be eye-opening.

What needs to be done to put a stop to this is that employers should take the trouble to file sick notes they suspect to be fraudulent and report these to the HPCSA.

The council’s investigator who spoke to the ZO on the issue, Mischal Julius, said people are not aware they can forward a complaint to the council for investigation. She said it was crucial for the public to keep them informed.

So let’s keep them informed and help rid society of the corrupt doctors.