Several private hospitals are paying rescue workers to bring road accident victims to them in order to claim cash from a government fund, an expert and a rescue foundation say.
For each road accident victim admitted for treatment, the hospitals claim 15,000 baht from the auto accident victims compensation fund, Dr Paiboon Suriyawongpaisal, an expert in emergency medicine at Ramathibodi Hospital, said yesterday.
The fund is administered by the Insurance Department under the Commerce Ministry.
Dr Paiboon was speaking at a national conference held yesterday at the National Institute for Emergency Medicine in Nonthaburi.
Sakaorat Somsakulrungrueang, of the Ruamkatanyu Foundation, one of the country's largest volunteer rescue worker organisations, said quite a few private hospitals were paying tea money to rescue workers in exchange for taking road accident victims to them.
The bribe had resulted in fierce competition among rescue workers desperately wanting to get to accident victims first to rush them to hospitals which would pay them, she said.
The practice puts the lives of victims at risk because rescue workers take victims to paying hospitals even when they are located further away from hospitals that do not pay, she said.
Worse still, unregistered rescue volunteers are joining the scramble for road accident victims which was against the law, Ms Sakaorat said.
