Diagnostic scan racket in Tata Memorial Hospital: 21 staffers booked for referring patients to private labs

Mumbai: A case was registered against 23 people including the manager and owner of the private lab at Bhoiwada police station after Tata Memorial Hospital authorities detected a racket allegedly referring cancer patients to private laboratories for commission.

As many as 11 persons including a few employees of the Tata Memorial Hospital in the city have been arrested for allegedly referring cancer patients to private laboratories for commission, police said on Wednesday.

An FIR was registered in connection with the incident based on the complaint of Anil Bhosale, a senior security officer at Tata Memorial Hospital.

The hospital, which comes under the purview of the Department of Atomic Energy, is known for advanced cancer treatment and research and gets patients from across the country.

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Some employees asked the patients to get diagnostic scans done at private imaging centres and laboratories, telling them that there was a long waiting period for scans in the hospital, said a police official.

The accused included an assistant administrative officer, ward boy, aaya, servant and cleaning staff. They allegedly received commission from the private labs whose rates are higher than those at the hospital, the official said. The accused, thus, cheated the patients as well as the government to the tune of lakhs of rupees, he said.

The modus operandi of the arrested staff- comprising junior administration officials, sepoys, ward boys and sanitary staff- was to find new patients and tell them that TMH had a long waiting period for scans. They would offer same-day scans at a private centre nearby as an alternative.'' The CT scan at TMH costs between Rs 6000 to Rs 10000 depending on the cancer site, but the same test at a private lab would cost between Rs 9000 to Rs 30000, informed a senior police official to TOI.

Based on a complaint filed by a hospital official, an FIR was registered against 21 persons including an employee of a private laboratory on July 16 at Bhoiwada police station and 11 persons were arrested. Further probe is on.

As per a media report in The Indian Express, “The accused employees would keep watch on patients coming to meet doctors, and when they were prescribing tests like MRI, CT-Scan, X-Ray, PET Scan, and 2D Echo, which can be easily done at very minimal cost at the hospital itself, the accused would misguide them by saying that those tests would take a long time in the hospital or their machines were shut. They would then convince patients and their relatives to take those tests done in a private lab. The employees would then send them to private labs, and one Infinity Centre near Gandhi Hospital was the most prominent one,” a police source privy to the probe said.

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