Mumbai : 21 TATA hospital staffers booked for allegedly referring poor patients to a Parel-based private lab for various medical tests to pocket commissions, police said Tuesday.
The police have booked a total 23 people, including the manager and owner of the lab, in connection with the case on July 15. Of this, 11 people were arrested on the same day and remaining are absconding.
An FIR was registered in connection with the incident based on the complaint of Anil Bhosale, senior security officer at Tata Memorial Hospital.
As per the police sources, the security department of the hospital had received information that some employees from the hospital had been indulging in wrongdoings.
“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.
The accused staffers would then send patient details to the lab manager on WhatsApp and later get hefty commissions from the lab operator every week.
The hospital decided to crack down on this racket of labs and hospital staffers. With the help of security personnel, they kept watch on certain suspect staffers.
On July 15, two suspect staffers vanished from the hospital premises and reached near the Infinity Centre. The security personnel followed them , and when the lab’s manager, Sanjay Sonawne, arrived with a bag full of cash, they were caught red-handed and taken to the Tata hospital, the source added.
At the hospital, in the presence of a panch witnesses, when the bag was opened, police found a total of 24 envelopes with Rs 3.79 lakh in cash and a five-page list of the names of the staffers, who were supposed to received the envelopes.
The police have arrested 11 people so far who have been sent to police custody by the court.
When contacted, Dr C S Pramesh, the director of the hospital, said “At Tata Memorial Hospital, we have a very low threshold to act sternly against staff who work against the ethos of compassionate cancer care in the hospital. He added that the administration acted swiftly and decisively, and that they have handed over the case to the police for further investigations. The employees concerned have been suspended, and will be dismissed if the allegations are proven.”
Police suspect that the accused persons may have been indulging in this practise for the past two–three years, and other labs are also suspected to be involved in this.The police have seized the mobile phones of the accused and have collected details of their WhatsApp chats with the labs, incriminating them.
