Aart Heering
A good friend was soon to be operated on by a renowned orthopedic surgeon. But unfortunately! The operation was canceled at the last minute, because the good man was arrested in the meantime. He was placed under house arrest on suspicion of corruption, along with three colleagues, who are also heads of departments at Milan hospitals.
The rogue academics turned out to be secret shareholders of a company in the region that supplied medicines and prostheses to their own hospitals. Competing products were of course not allowed and thanks to the mediation of a politician friend 'their' medicines should even have been made compulsory throughout Lombardy.
Royalties
That provided the gang of four, in addition to generous candy trips and jobs for relatives, also a wealth of royalties, which the physicians knew their way around. One of them was having trouble paying off the mortgage on his Milanese multi-million dollar home, while two others had set their sights on a Maserati Ghibli, a gadget worth about 80.000 euros. That will not come for the time being, because our friend, and not only she, has now switched to another specialist.
Party
Italy has countless hard-working, skilled and enthusiastic doctors, that's undeniable, but the medical profession is regularly discredited. Like recently, when an entire ward of the Ospedale del Mare in Naples was closed for a day and patients had to move because the medical director was having a party with the entire staff.
Fraud with bone fractures
Or worse, in Palermo, where a sizable gang was rounded up for health insurance fraud. To do this, they hired poor people who they used heavy weights to inflict fractures on their bones. The slobs themselves only collected a few hundred euros, but the controlling doctors and the loss adjusters with whom they made common cases, were left with tens of thousands. The lucrative game came to an end when one of their victims, a young Moroccan, was worked over-enthusiastically and the autopsy revealed what had happened.
Needless operations
One of the arrested professionals in Milan also specialized in performing unnecessary operations, in order to be able to collect as much as possible. That is a practice that occurs more often and with which I have come into contact with several times.
A few years ago I had persistent earaches. Through a doctor friend (that's usually how it goes) I was able to make an appointment with the director of OKN of a renowned Roman hospital. He examined me and soon came to the conclusion: 'Perforation of the eardrum. This is where surgery is required.'
An unpleasant affair, he explained to me: 'The waiting list is long, a few months, and once you are admitted it can take days before the preliminary examinations are completed.'
Private clinic
But there was an alternative: "If you come to my private clinic, I'll do it right away, not some assistant, and you'll be done in half a day." That would cost several thousand, but 'as a foreigner you do have insurance that covers that?'
I had one, but I was not completely convinced and when I went to the Netherlands a few days later, I made an appointment with an OKN doctor at the Groninger Academisch. His diagnosis was revealing: no hole to be seen, a simple inflammation, a few drops are enough!
Something similar happened to me last year, when I went to a famous private clinic in Rome with knee problems, which, however, also enjoys the fame of a grappling machine. Well, it turned out!
Operate!
The intake interview had not yet ended when it was already made clear to me that the meniscus had to be removed. So operate. But having become wise, I first consulted an older orthopedist, recommended to me by my GP. He first had me take X-rays and based on that he came to a completely different conclusion: 'A little bit of osteoarthritis, quite normal at your age. Not too much running, a few sessions of massage and first of all doing nothing. And certainly not surgery, because the meniscus really has nothing to do with it!'
I am not even talking about that knowledge in whom the specialist in the hospital found a presumably malignant tumor. However, further investigation was not possible until months later, "unless you come to my private clinic and so on."
Public-private health care
This type of practice is facilitated by the mixed public-private nature of the Italian health care system. In principle, everyone is insured, but those who have money turn to a private clinic. Many hospital doctors also work privately and those who do doctors can count on preferential treatment, which can lead to excesses.
The next time an operation is suggested to me, I will therefore definitely ask for a second opinion and make sure that the doctor in question puts the patient's health above his Maserati!
Comments