SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Health announced on Thursday (Oct 24) that it intends to revoke the licence of a medical clinic that had provided short teleconsultations, with some lasting only a minute.
MOH said that MaNaDr Clinic is no longer able to provide outpatient medical services in a clinically and ethically appropriate manner.
Moreover, 41 doctors who had given teleconsultation services at the clinic are being referred by MOH to the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) for inquiries into possible professional misconduct.
MOH had already had MaNaDr Clinic stop its outpatient medical services via teleconsultation by Aug 16 and carried out investigations afterwards.
It discovered that “a very large number of cases” seen by doctors at the clinic involved teleconsultations with video calls lasting one minute or even less. Despite these short teleconsultations, doctors still prescribed medications and issued medical certificates (MCs).
MOH said this raised issues about the safety and quality of the care the clinic’s doctors provided to their patients — whether the medicines prescribed and MCs issued by the doctors were based on sound medical grounds. Some patients had even been given several MCs within a short time.
The ministry also found that the doctors kept questionable and poor documentation of their patients’ consultations.
“Based on these findings, there is reason to believe that there is an entrenched culture of disregard for the applicable clinical and ethical standards within MaNaDr Clinic,” MOH added.
As for the 41 doctors referred to the SMC, 13 had worked as locum practitioners giving teleconsultations at MaNaDr Clinic but at the same time were employed by MOH Holdings or public healthcare facilities.
MOH cited their breach of employment terms as they had conducted secondary clinical activities without their employers’ consent and added that most had provided teleconsultations while on active duty in public healthcare institutions.
The ministry’s full statement on MaNaDr Clinic may be found here.
Commenting on a local Reddit thread, Singaporeans expressed shock and dismay at the news about MaNaDr Clinic. One called it “really quite an extreme case of malpractice by a clinic”.
Another noted how helpful teleconsultations are for people with limited mobility, such as disabled individuals, and said that “black sheep” such as MaNaDr Clinic’s doctors “severely abused the system”.
One commenter said that what the clinic’s physicians had done had “set back telemedicine a few years”.
A Reddit user, however, raised the point that this type of breach of conduct from physicians could have been avoided if the “culture of distrust” among employers towards employees diminished and if employees were encouraged to take a proper recuperation period when they did fall ill. /TISG
Read also: Workers seek more understanding from bosses on telemedicine MCs