Accused of demanding money from refugees in exchange for false certificates, an AP-HP doctor was suspended.
We have seen more elegant. A doctor from the AP-HP (Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Paris) is suspected of having extorted money from patients receiving AME, state medical aid, a device allowing people without resources to benefit from free care.
The information was disclosed by the AP-HP itself, which decided to suspend the activities of the offending practitioner. In a communicated, she specifies that following a report made by a volunteer from a migrant aid association, “a foreign patient in an irregular situation, beneficiary of the AME, reported having paid sums of money on several occasions. in cash to the doctor concerned at La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital ”.
Other people involved
According to the information provided by the Parisian institution, these sums were paid in order to obtain the issuance of a medical certificate “allowing the initiation of the procedure for applying for a residence permit for health reasons”. The hepatologist would then have engaged in a form of blackmail by exploiting the difficulties encountered by these people in an irregular situation and by offering them monetary services.
According to the volunteer, other migrants have been recruited into this illegal system. Information confirmed by the internal investigation of the AP-HP, which “suggests that other patients in comparable situations would also have been required to make such payments,” said the press release.
Martin Hirsch, director of the AP-HP, indicated that he had reported these facts to the courts as well as to the Council of the Order of Physicians. In addition, disciplinary proceedings have been initiated.
“This type of decision, which remains very rare, is initiated when the seriousness of the suspected facts calls into question the confidence of the institution in the action of the practitioner”, the press release concludes.
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