Stent racket surfaces in Punjab Institute of Cardiology

LAHORE: A stent racket involving doctors, nurses and administrative staff has surfaced in Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) which is asking the poor patients for money to get the stent implant done in a timely manner, Bol News has learnt.

“They have asked numerous patients to pay the money into personal accounts and get the stent implant done for Rs100,000 which is usually done for Rs200,000 to Rs250,000 from private hospitals,” an insider from PIC said while adding that they usually tell the patients that they are charging this money to save their time as there are long queues of patients to get this procedure done and could take months if they wait in queues legally, as this is the only state of the art heart hospital in Punjab.

People had few options except to pay them to get this implant done at the earliest, otherwise these patients may not survive due to heart ailments. This racket has been ongoing for quite some time now, he said.

A stent is a small mesh tube meant to open obstructed arteries so the blood flows in them normally. The procedure is called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or coronary angioplasty.

Read more: Pakistan becomes 2nd Producer of heart stents in Muslim world

Sources confirmed to Bol News that this racket has been operating right under the nose of the medical superintendent (MS) and he was not aware of it, or he is also involved in this scam, they alleged. Otherwise how is it possible that he is not aware about the fact that the staff of his hospital is charging for stent implants.

One of the sons of the patient, *Basit Khan told Bol News that a senior clerk at the admin office of the PIC allegedly asked for Rs100,000 out of which Rs50,000 were given in cash and he asked the patient to transfer the remaining to a doctor’s bank account in September this year to get the stent implant done on urgent basis.

Basit added that when he tried to transfer the funds to the doctor’s account it was an invalid account on which he told the clerk and he shared another bank account number of another bank to which he transferred Rs50,000 on September 17 and the stent implant of his father was done the same day.

“I had asked the senior clerk to give me a fake receipt of PIC so that I could get the amount reimbursed from my office but he didn’t give me the receipt which forced me to submit the complaint against them to the MS office.

When Bol News investigated about the account number, it was revealed that account belongs to a woman working at PIC as a nurse and the current balance of this account was Rs289,533.

Sources privy to this development added that although currently the names of only three members of this alleged racket have surfaced including senior clerk, nurse and a doctor but the involvement of more staff members including doctors, nurses and administrative staff cannot be ruled out and the issue needs to be thoroughly probed.

When contacted, the senior clerk in question was not available for comment as according to his family members he is quite unwell and suffering from dengue due to which he is not going to the hospital either.

MS Dr Mohammad Tehseen said that he was not aware of this racket in his office and the matter will be thoroughly probed and whosoever is involved in this heinous crime would be taken to task as such nefarious activities cannot be tolerated.

We have received the application from the patient’s family, and we are forming an inquiry commission to thoroughly probe this and other similar incidents and justice would be served. “We will make the culprits a lesson for others and they would be dealt with an iron hand,” MS Dr Tehseen said while adding that if found guilty stern action will be taken against them or all others who are involved.

*Name has been changed to protect identity.