Corruption in the medical field and measures to prevent corruption: Based on the data of the Anti-Corruptin & Civil Rights Commission
Authors:   Korea Anti-Corruption Law Association, Choi Yong-Jeon 
Published: September 2023

In May 2023, the SBS ‘Model Taxi 2’ drama, which aired on the theme of corruption in the medical field, recorded a fairly high viewership rating. ‘Model Taxi 2’ was aired with the theme of medical personnel who committed various medical accidents and corruption, such as surrogate surgery by mobilizing pharmaceutical company employees and surgery under the influence of alcohol. It is suspected that such corruption is frequent in the medical field.
The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission has voted to consider false and fraudulent claims by doctors and medical institutions as corruption. However, the Korean Medical Association systematically protested the decision on the grounds that it fostered mutual distrust among the public, doctors, medical workers, staff and doctors, and the medical field. The medical community is taking a tolerant attitude towards anti-corruption activities, such as internal public interest whistleblowing and fighting to block the implementation of the compensation system.
In this reality, this study began with the purpose of preventing some medical institutions or medical personnel who commit corruption from committing corruption any more, and protecting medical institutions and medical personnel performing normal medical activities. In addition, based on various data collected by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission through internal public interest reporting newly established in 2003 and the reward system introduced in 2008, the current status and types of corruption in the medical field were analyzed and improvement plans were presented.
According to the data of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, first, cases of violation of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act are not diverse. In general, these are excessive claims for insurance benefits, hiring unqualified people, lending licenses, or receiving kickbacks rom pharmaceutical companies. Second, compared to the cases of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act, corruption related to healthcare takes on quite a variety of forms, and the number of cases is large. Among many acts of corruption, there are many fraudulent claims for insurance benefit costs, and the methods of fraudulent claims for insurance benefit costs vary. In addition, medical personnel directly commit corruption, mobilize employees of medical institutions, or commit themselves by themselves. Corruption such as lending a doctor’s license, acting on behalf of an unqualified person, corruption in bidding, corruption in hiring, bribery, receiving kickbacks, embezzlement, etc. It is no exaggeration to say that it is a department store of corruption. Of course, the same is true for other occupations, but we cannot help but be surprised at the phenomena occurring in the medical field, which requires a high degree of professionalism and strict medical ethics.
As measures to improve the system to prevent such acts of corruption, the self-regulatory system, strengthening punishment, acceptance of medical ethics laws to strengthen medical ethics, and expansion of targets for ‘corrupt acts’ in the medical field were proposed.