He extorted cash in exchange for medical certificates. THE’public assistance from Paris hospitals(AP-HP) announced in a press release to suspend Doctor Yves Benhamou, member of the team of the hepato-gastroenterology department of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital (Paris), “following a report made by a volunteer from a migrant aid association“. Indeed, a foreign patient benefiting from State medical aid (AME), which allows people in financial difficulty to receive free medical care, “reported on several occasions having paid sums of money in cash to the doctor concerned at La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, to obtain the issuance of a medical certificate allowing the initiation of the procedure for applying for a residence permit for health reasons“, reveals the AP-HP. The testimony of this patient and the investigation of the AP-HP suggest that”other patients in comparable situations would also have had to make such payments.“This is why the director of the AP-HP, Martin Hirsch decided to report the facts to justice, to suspend the doctor and to initiate disciplinary proceedings against him and to report the facts to the National Council of Order of Physicians (CNOM).
Behavior “which revolts the entire AP-HP community”
This type of decision “remains very rare”, according to the AP-HP, and underlines the gravity of these facts which “calls into question the confidence of the institution in the action of the practitioner“. Asked by the newspaper The world, Martin Hirsch said that the AP-HP “[fera] everything to ensure that such acts do not go unanswered.“And to add:”There will not be the slightest indulgence vis-à-vis a behavior that revolts the entire community of La Pitié-Salpêtrière and the AP-HP. “These actions constitute in fact serious faults contrary to ethics and medical deontology.
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