Fraudulent GP avoids jail term

An Auckland GP who falsified patient records to enable him to fraudulently take more than $180,000 from the Ministry of Health has avoided a jail term.

Hongsheng Kong, 43, was sentenced to 12 months' home detention and 400 hours' community work after admitting 16 fraud charges relating to events between August 2004 and May 2007.

Kong admitted the charges during the fifth week of his trial at Auckland District Court earlier this year.

Judge Emma Aitken said it was with some difficulty that she decided someone whose offending was "sophisticated, premeditated and deliberate" should not serve a jail term.

She indicated Kong's sentence for a jail term would have fallen between 2-1/4 to 2-1/2 years after taking into account his lack of convictions, stress and the fact he paid back the $183,135 he had taken through his criminal offending.

As the offending occurred in a transition period between when home detention was set down by the parole board and today's regime where a judge can sentence an offender to home detention for a sentence of two years or less, Judge Aitken had jurisdiction to impose home detention.

She decided home detention was appropriate as Kong was facing several other consequences, including possible discipline from health authorities and the shame of negative publicity.

"You have been publicly named, your photo has been in the paper, and everybody who knows you and all your patients are aware of criminal proceedings," she said.

"I'm sure will be named and rightly shamed in public."

Judge Aitken noted Kong was facing a health disciplinary hearing over his actions, and though she would not make assumptions about the exact outcome, she did say there would certainly be consequences which impacted upon him in a negative way.

She also noted there was civil action underway which was likely to result in him paying back more funds to the Auckland District Health Board.

Kong faced 21 charges of fraud and one of attempting to obstruct the course of justice when his trial began.

Judge Aitken eventually threw out the charge of attempting to obstruct justice and the Crown withdrew five charges after Kong admitted the 16 he was sentenced on today.

They included 10 charges of altering patient notes and six charges related to submitting fraudulent claims.

Crown prosecutor Anna Longdill said there were at least 150 days when Kong fraudulently changed patient notes, and an estimated total of 3800 fraudulent transactions at his practice in suburban Panmure.

Among Kong's actions were to make false entries which indicated patients had visited his practice when they had not. In some cases he entered false clinical notes.

Judge Aitken said some of the patients were not in New Zealand when the entries were made, and others had not seen him for more than three years.

In some cases Kong changed the ethnicity of his patients on their records.

She said all his actions had fraudulently inflating the number of patients on his register, making him appear entitled to extra funding.

National Health Board national risk manager Michael Moore said after sentencing that Kong's offending was prolonged, systematic and calculated.

"He abused an honesty-based claiming practice, which resulted in him receiving government funding he was not entitled to. Fortunately the monitoring and auditing systems detected his offending," he said.

"Fraudulent claims will not be tolerated. Where we suspect the misuse of funds we will investigate and prosecute to ensure the offenders are brought to justice."

- NZPA