In the last eight years, abuse of prescriptions has been recorded in four out of 10 cantons of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH). Prescriptions for medicines are issued to patients who do not use them, without their knowledge. This is done electronically, given that the system for issuing medical prescriptions is digitized.
According to the law, a pharmacist can issue a medicine on a prescription only with an inspection of a health card of the patient in whose name the prescription is written. Pharmacists violate this rule during such abuses.
Medicine paid for by the health insurance institute is prescribed with fake prescriptions. The institute has a contract with numerous pharmacies, to which it has given access to the system of electronic prescriptions.
Thus, pharmacies, on the basis of a fake prescription, can charge the institute for the medicine that they did not issue to the patient. This gives them the opportunity to sell one box of medicine twice, once to the institute, and the second time on the “black market”.
The last such case happened in Sarajevo. Competent institutions say that the identities of more than two hundred patients were misused. More than 350.000 BAM (175,000 euros) were extracted from the health fund with fake prescriptions. The figure is not final, because the investigation is still ongoing.
Criminal charges for fake prescriptions
The Prosecutor’s Office of Canton Sarajevo (CS) received a criminal complaint about fake prescriptions in December 2021 from the management of the Sarajevo Health Center. The official investigation has not yet started. The Prosecutor’s Office says that they are collecting evidence and that, due to the protection of criminal proceedings, they cannot provide more information.
“I became the director on September 1st, 2021. Already in the middle of that month, I came across information that prescriptions were being written for people who do not use this therapy,” says Abel Baltic, director of the Public Institution Health Centre of CS.
This institution has about 2.000 employees and provides primary health care for about 400.000 patients in nine health centers. Each doctor of this health center has his own unique password to access the electronic prescription system. The system is managed by the cantonal Institute of Health Insurance, and 176 pharmacies in this canton have access.
Baltic says that he formed a disciplinary commission and found that all the fake prescriptions were written using the passwords of six doctors, against whom he filed a criminal complaint. During the disciplinary investigation, Baltic says, the doctors denied that they wrote fake prescriptions. They claimed that their passwords were misused.
The Sarajevo Health Center also informed the Anti-corruption and Quality Control Office of the CS about the whole case. This office expanded the investigation and determined that it was the passwords of nine, not six, doctors. The identity of at least 209 patients was misused, they say, Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
