The fact
The Court of Auditors Section jurisdiction for Tuscany (judge of first instance) sentenced a family doctor to pay 3,000 euros to the competent health company as compensation for the damage caused, in his capacity as a doctor affiliated with the NHS, for the reimbursement of fictitiously prescribed medicines. The doctor had been called to answer for 128 prescriptions in the name of his clients relating to drugs from a certain pharmaceutical company which had been presented at affiliated pharmacies located in locations particularly distant from the places of residence of the individual clients. The investigations carried out by the Carabinieri Command for the protection of health, which had questioned the assisted holders of the prescriptions, had ascertained that they used to use local pharmacies or in any case more convenient for them, that some of them had declared that they made occasional use of the prescribed specialties while others had never taken said medicines nor had received the prescriptions and that, finally, among the scientific informants of the company, in the years in which the prescriptions had been drawn up, there was the doctor's wife, who, by sending the signed prescriptions from her husband, she had personally collected the drugs in question on several occasions. The doctor appealed the first instance ruling.
The right
The appeal judge confirmed the ruling of the jurisdictional section for the Tuscany region. The unlawful conduct of the MMG, held in the context of the existing service relationship as a result of his inclusion, following the agreement with the National Health Service, in the organization of the same, with consequent specific obligations and constraints, becomes evident if we consider the dual nature of the medical prescription on the regional form (certificate, for the recognition of the illness which enables the pharmacist to dispense the medicine, authorization for what concerns the exercise by the patient to use the pharmaceutical service national utility) and its peculiar function which is to authorize the assumption of a financial burden by the Region, through the Local Health Authority. It follows from this that if the prescription is not sent by the holder or one of his representatives but by an unrelated third party, its issue is also flawed, as it took place, in violation of the obligations of the contracted healthcare provider, for purposes other than the specific treatment needs of the patients, to obtain the medicines they needed at the expense of the National Health Service.
Judgment result
The Court of Auditors, third appeal section, confirmed the sentence of the doctor for the tax damage.
[Adv. Ennio Grassini – www.dirittosanitario.net
