GP 'invented patients to boost state funding'

Hongsheng Kong has pleaded not guilty to charges of tampering with documents. Photo / Martin Sykes

An Auckland GP falsified patient files to invent patients he didn't have so he could obtain taxpayers money he wasn't entitled to, a jury has heard.

The Crown alleges Dr Hongsheng Kong manipulated patient files at his Panmure practice, Hong Kong Surgery, to create hundreds of patient files to receive ongoing government funding.

Kong is accused of 21 charges of using a document dishonestly for a pecuniary advantage. He is alleged to have tampered with records to make it appear he had more patients than he did and to show patients visited him when they had not.

Along with the fraud charges the doctor faces an additional charge of obstructing the course of justice. That charge relates to an allegation he altered a patient's medical files to change a diagnosis he made.

He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Prosecutor Mark Woolford told a jury at the Auckland District Court yesterday the more patients a doctor had on a patient register the more the doctor got paid. "And that's what this case is largely about."

He said the Crown case was that Kong inflated patient numbers on the register for up to five years so he could be paid subsidies that he wasn't entitled to.

"The key issue in this trial is, was he acting with intent to defraud when making the file changes?" he asked the jury.

He gave an example of one man who had been a patient of Kong's former surgery but left New Zealand to live in Australia in 2002 or 2003 and never returned.

Kong is alleged to have changed the man's enrolment to list him as a confirmed patient as well as making a false clinical note and prescription.

"Other patient records were changed then too. He made changes in blocks if there [were] no apparent patient bookings," Mr Woolford alleged.

The court heard the obstructing the course of justice charge related to a patient who died from skin cancer in January 2007. His family complained to the Health and Disability Commissioner after his death about the care he received from Kong.

The patient, whose name is suppressed, had a lesion on his right heel. Kong diagnosed diabetes and didn't think there was any need for further tests, and is alleged to have ignored the man's daughter's requests for more tests.

Mr Woolford said Kong made a "raft of changes" to the man's file after receiving the complaint - including that he wanted to send the man for tests but he refused them.