Six people have been charged with taking part in an organised criminal group that, prosecutors say, siphoned €3m from the health insurance fund using fake patients and swapped blood tests at St George University Hospital in Plovdiv. Deputy regional prosecutor Dimitar Pehlivanov is the supervising prosecutor in the case.
Economic police raided the rheumatology and neurology clinics early on 5 October. The searches lasted more than six hours. Officers seized documents and led 10 people out in handcuffs.
The charges name Prof. Dr Mariela Geneva-Popova as head of the group. She is head of the clinic, owner of a medical centre and dean of a faculty at the Medical University in Plovdiv. "I apologise to my colleagues and the whole medical profession," Prof. Geneva-Popova said.
Investigators say they found fake referrals, hospital admissions and tests, as well as swapped blood samples. The hospital scans a patient's ID card when they are admitted and discharged. According to investigators, staff printed out the card of a former patient from the system and ran only the three lines of characters on its back through the scanner. That is enough to admit a person who never came to the hospital.
"There was a case where patients with poor results were discharged, and blood was taken from another patient with good results," prosecutor Pehlivanov said.
An employee who knows about the scheme and saw the violations said some patients came only to give blood and left without an examination or treatment. Medicines under a funded programme were prescribed in their names, but they never received them. When their results were poor and follow-up tests were needed, other patients with good results, or clinic staff, gave blood instead.
He said people who had never set foot in the clinic were also "admitted" in the system to fill empty beds. They included close relatives, friends, staff of the clinic and of other clinics, and even employees of the Medical University. The data later sent to the health insurance fund was entirely false.
A false result can lead doctors to a wrong suspicion, for example of an infectious disease or cancer, the employee said. Doctors warn that a swapped sample stays in the patient's health record and can confuse the diagnosis and treatment if the patient falls ill again.
In a written statement, the management of St George said it has no evidence that blood tests were swapped and that this could not be proven. The hospital added that staff had not reported anything of the kind. If the authorities confirm the violations, the hospital will seek to hold those responsible to account under the law.
Checks by the authorities and the hospital's own checks should catch such violations. According to the hospital, the rheumatology clinic has had 8 internal checks since 2023. The regional and national health insurance funds (RZOK and NZOK) checked the clinic 5 times in the first six months of this year and found one violation, but the hospital does not say what it was.
The internal checks found failures, mostly in keeping medical records and in following the rules for treatment under clinical pathways. The doctors responsible, including the head of the clinic, were fined for them.