Biratnagar. KATHMANDU: Three employees of a pharmacy at Koshi Hospital have been sacked from service. The contractual service employee was dismissed from service after it was revealed that he had misused the health insurance amount. Among those sacked are two pharmacy assistants and one office assistant. The hospital administration has not released the name of the employee, saying further investigation is underway.

It is stated that the employees were relieved from service after they were found involved in various irregularities like over-supply of medicines, paying by showing expensive medicines not prescribed by the doctors and showing large quantity of medicines in the name of patients.

A case of misuse of treatment money has come to light after a cancer patient from Morang filed a complaint. The patient had lodged a complaint with the hospital administration after he came to know that the patient had deducted the amount equivalent to a month’s worth of medicines from his insurance account even though the doctor had prescribed medicines for seven days during the treatment at the emergency ward of the hospital.

The hospital formed a probe committee after receiving the complaint, said medical superintendent Dr Runa Jha.

He said, “In the past, some patients had complained about the misuse of the insurance medicines, but this time we received a written complaint. ’

Although the hospital administration has not made public the names of the sacked employees, the report of the probe committee has proved their direct involvement.

Around one thousand patients visit the hospital every day. More than half of them are health insurance members. Most of the insured patients suffer from chronic diseases. As per the data provided by the insurance section of the hospital, most of the insured patients visit the medical department for treatment.

According to the statistics of the fiscal year 2081/82, out of 317,718 patients who visited the hospital for treatment, 123,983 received treatment through health insurance. Among them, high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, gastritis, lower abdominal pain and other diseases are the patients.

According to the Chief of the Department of Medicine, Dr Deepak Sigdel, the most common problems at present are high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, heart disease and brain-related problems. He said, “This disease, which used to happen only in older people in the past, has now started appearing in the younger generation as well. The number of people taking insurance service is increasing day by day as the disease of taking medicines for a long time is increasing. ’

The number of insured patients is also increasing in the orthopedics, gynecology and obstetrics departments, ENT, neurology, skin and other departments. According to health stakeholders, the need to make the medicine supply and billing system more transparent has increased as the number of insured patients and chronic patients is increasing.