GOVERNMENT agents filed graft charges against 21 officials and employees of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) for allowing a company to do business with the government despite findings of fraud.

PhilHealth officials accredited WellMed Dialysis and laboratory Center Corp. this year even after discovering fraudulent claims, Catherine Camposano-Remigio, chief of the National Bureau of Investigation’s Anti-Graft Division, told reporters yesterday.

PhilHealth’s regional office failed to conduct periodic monitoring of WellMed as required by law, according to a copy of the complaint filed with the Justice department.

The agency’s accreditation subcommittee also continued processing WellMed claims even after the company’s accreditation was endorsed for withdrawal.

The accreditation department also failed to withdraw WellMed’s permit after it was informed of the company’s violations, referring it instead to a subcommittee that was unauthorized to deal with it, the NBI said.

The Justice department in June indicted WellMed owner and Vice-President Bryan Christopher W. Sy and whistleblowers Edwin C. Roberto and Liezel Aileen Santos-De Leon for conspiring to collect payments from PhilHealth for medical services to patients who had died.

In a sworn statement attached to the complaint, Mr. Roberto said it was Mr. Sy who had ordered him to file the dialysis claims of two dead patients. Before he resigned in 2018, 27 claims made up of 280 sessions worth P808,600 were claimed.

Early this month, a Quezon City regional trial court dismissed for lack of jurisdiction an estafa case filed by the NBI against the respondents. NBI said the complaint had been re-filed before a metropolitan trial court. — Vann Marlo M. Villegas

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR