MEDISAVE (Abuse)

Mr Chew Heng Ching asked the Acting Minister for Health whether the Medisave Audit Review Committee set up in December 1987 has identified cases of abuse in the use of Medisave and, if so, what actions will be taken to prevent these abuses from happening again.

The Acting Minister for Health (Mr Yeo Cheow Tong): Mr Speaker, Sir, the Medisave Audit Review Committee was set up in December 1987 to review audit reports on the financial compliance and medical aspects of Medisave claims. It also monitors Medisave spending patterns to see if any trends emerge.

The CPF audit team has recently completed an audit of Medisave claims in NUH and three Government hospitals. They evaluated the system of internal control, and carried out checks on compliance with the claims procedure and guidelines as well as on the accuracy of the documents and records.

The audit showed that there were a few minor administrative errors in some of the Medisave claims. There were, however, no cases of abuse detected. The findings have been brought to the attention of the hospital management to help them to tighten controls. Similar audits will be carried out in the other Government hospitals.

In addition, all private hospitals have recently established inhouse Hospital Audit Committees comprising administrators and doctors to conduct monthly internal medical professional audit to ensure that claims are in order. For example, the Hospital Audit Committee will ensure that the operation and investigations carried out in each case are consistent with the diagnosis and are correctly classified and reported in the Medisave claims documents.

The Medisave Audit Review Committee will monitor the findings of the Hospital Audit Committees and will periodically conduct its own audit checks on the private hospitals.