general practitioner suspended. A turnover of 100 thousand euros
Drugs prescribed to unsuspecting patients and made to pay by the national health system. A well-tested fraud, monitored starting from 2018 by the carabinieri of the Nas in Rome and which yesterday led to the first two precautionary measures issued by the investigating judge against a 55-year-old drug scientist resident in Sant’Angelo Romano and a doctor of the ASL Roma 1, 64 years old, resident in Tiburtino. House arrest has been started for the first, while for the white coat, on the other hand, there will be an interdiction of the prohibition of the exercise of the medical profession for the duration of one year.
ROUND
But in the turn of involving more people. In fact, there are about twenty suspects and they are other family doctors (the majority always concentrated in the Asl 1) but also numerous complacent pharmacists who accept the red prescriptions compiled by the former. Or rather, to physically draw them up, according to what was ascertained in the early stages of investigation by the military in via dell’Aeronautica, it would have been directly the shrewd 55-year-old who had the doctors delivered the blank prescription books and then filled them with the list of medicines of which was representative, ie antifungals and antivirals.
The circumstance, in fact, would also have been noted in the case of the doctor on whom the judge’s ruling now hangs. He had gained so much trust in her – after reasonable remuneration according to the investigation – that he was given carte blanche. In short, the names and tax codes of the patients who knew nothing about it appeared one after the other in the cookbooks. Often these were very old people or patients who rarely came to the office for a visit. The system, therefore, would have continued even in full pandemic, when Covid was scarier than today and medical checks and specialist examinations were very slow.
ANOMALY
Despite the crisis for the sector, the pharmaceutical representative, the expert and well-established even among the best-known medical practices, continued to record excellent turnover and reach all company targets. The suspicion of the investigators is that pharmacists also seek their good advantage from the system set up, through an appropriate division of revenues or the receipt of various benefits. Such as, for example, for clinics in the start-up phase, the diversion of a good number of patients on which to gain the corresponding share of health care. The anomaly regarding an excessive prescription of medicines containing Fluconazole (antifungal) and Famciclovir (antiviral) as active ingredients had triggered the alert at the ASL 1 pharmaceutical service which had thus activated the Nas specialists. According to the indictment hypothesis, the two suspects simulate overprescriptions of drugs in favor of unsuspecting patients, in order to obtain full reimbursement of expenses by the Regional Health Service, so far disputed against them for 25 thousand euros.
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