A common scene at the HCMC Tumor Hospital with patients crowding in waiting areas.

The board of directors of the Ho Chi Minh City-based Tumor Hospital has admitted to Thanh Nien that some of their doctors were moonlighting at the hospital.

“Many ultrasound services have flourished around the hospital and there have been cases when doctors arranged patients to use these services,” the hospital director, Le Hoang Minh, said on Monday.

Last week, the paper found at least two doctors and three hospital employees who were profiting by fast-tracking public services for a fee.

Minh said the hospital’s ultrasound ward staffed by only five doctors was constantly overloaded with around 300 patients a day.

He said the hospital had extended working hours at the ward by starting earlier with no lunch break as patients had to wait for between three and five days before being checked at the ward, especially in complicated cases.

He said the overload situation had reduced markedly since then.

However, Thanh Nien found the ultrasound ward was still overcrowded with patients waiting to be examined. Many patients had arrived at the hospital as early as 4 a.m. to take numbers for an examination, hoping that they would get an ultrasound before the end of the day.

The hospital doctor, only identified as B.M., who the newspaper discovered was involved in fast-tracking paying patients, had been told by the hospital board of directors to meet with Thanh Nien late Monday.

He admitted to Thanh Nien that he and all other doctors from the ultrasound ward had arranged for patients to access private ultrasound services outside the hospital.

“Due to overload [at the hospital], all the ultrasound ward doctors have working relations with outside [services] to speed-up the process, but only for related cases,” he said after the Thanh Nien correspondent showed him a bogus ultra-sound record that the doctor had signed.

When the doctor saw the record, he said that he and other doctors had referred some patients to outside services because they were friends and relatives.

What he didn’t know was the record he was being shown belonged to another Thanh Nien reporter whom he had helped, for a fee, to get an ultrasound at the Tumor Hospital without waiting in line.

The doctor also admitted that the two people, identified by Thanh Nien for introducing paying patients to him, were hospital employees: one working in the library and the other in the CT scan section.

Minh then read the record and said that it would not pass scrutiny at the finance department and the hospital had failed to collect money from it.

Following an earlier Thanh Nien report in May about illegal brokers operating at this and many other hospitals, the HCMC Tumor Hospital has conducted an inspection and discovered a guard sending hospital patients to a private service next door.

The guard was assigned to another part of the hospital where he would have less interaction with patients, the hospital said.

The hospital has also seized hundreds of private name cards from a male doctor at its image analysis ward. He was allegedly giving patients the cards to promote his own imaging clinic next door.

Reported by Thanh Tung - Dam Huy