Thirteen medical practitioners
have been arrested for allegedly carrying out unnecessary medical operations
for financial gain in a private medical clinic in Milan. The accused doctors are under
investigation for 25 deaths in Milan’s Santa Rita medical clinic,
now referred to by the Italian media as the ‘clinic of horrors’.
Two doctors who have been
arrested on charges of murder in the deaths of their patients are also accused
of causing ‘harm or serious harm’ to another 86 patients between 2005 and 2006.
Eleven other doctors and the owner of the clinic are under house arrest for
their alleged roles in performing operations that have been called
‘unnecessary’ and ‘lucrative’.
Among the operations were the
removal of a lung and at least two mastectomies for simple cysts. Surgeries
were also performed on terminally ill patients. The operations were part of
what prosecutors allege was an ongoing ‘system’ set up to defraud state health
funds in reimbursement claims.
Prosecutors Grazia Pradella and
Tiziana Siciliano said ‘little did it matter that the clinic was supposed to
cure patients: the result of the treatment was incidental; what counted was the
financial return’.
It is alleged that through
scores of fraudulent diagnoses and surgeries, medical personnel at the clinic
lined their pockets with as much as 2,000 to 27,000 euro a month.
