Striking-off for false pack size endorsements
A Surrey pharmacist who claimed NHS payment for small pack sizes of
medicines when he had dispensed larger packs has had his name removed
from the Register of Pharmaceutical Chemists on the order of the Royal
Pharmaceutical Society’s Disciplinary Committee.
At an inquiry begun in August 2007 and concluded on 27 September 2007,
the committee inquired into the case of Bharat Kumar Kalyanji Suchak
(registration number 68280), of Worcester Park, Surrey. A complaint had
been received from the Council of the Society alleging that on various
dates Mr Suchak, at a pharmacy he owned in London SW19, had endorsed
prescriptions to indicate that small pack sizes had been dispensed when
he had supplied larger pack sizes. Products concerned included Gaviscon
liquid, Diprobase cream, E45 cream and malathion aqueous lotion. He had
submitted the wrongly endorsed prescriptions to the NHS Prescription
Pricing Authority for payment and had received overpayments for the products
concerned.
Following an investigation by the NHS Counter Fraud Service, he had made
a repayment of £3,187.56.
The committee heard that Mr Suchak had wrongly endorsed prescriptions
for many years but, in April 2002, the NHS Counter Fraud Service began
an investigation into his activities and wrote to several patients asking
what pack sizes had been supplied to them. These letters had come to
Mr Suchak’s attention in mid-April 2002 and, at about that time,
he had changed his dispensing practice and begun endorsing the correct
large pack sizes. He had also amended April prescriptions that he had
already endorsed incorrectly but had not yet sent to the PPA. He did
not inform the PPA that he had been wrongly endorsing prescriptions for
many years.
When interviewed by police and counter fraud specialists, Mr Suchak claimed
that he endorsed small pack sizes because his
computer software had an on-screen instruction to do so. He also said
that he had been taught to endorse small pack sizes while at college.
In evidence to the committee, Mr Suchak claimed he had been taught to
endorse small pack sizes during his preregistration training with Boots
The Chemists and had carried on endorsing that way. He said that he did
not know that the PPA used his endorsements to assess the amount he would
be paid.
Mr Suchak denied that he had changed his endorsing practice in April
2002 because he had learnt about the investigation; he said that it was
because he had read an article to the effect that endorsing small pack
sizes was wrong.
He admitted making the erroneous claims and receiving overpayment but
denied being dishonest in doing so, merely mistaken.
Giving the committee’s determination, the chairman, John Burrow,
set out at length a number of inconsistencies in Mr Suchak’s evidence
to the investigators and the committee. He also listed a number of claims
made by Mr Suchak that the committee could not accept because Mr Suchak
had been unable to substantiate them. “In conclusion,” the
chairman said, “we did not find Mr Suchak a reliable or truthful
witness.”
The chairman continued: “We bore in mind that in the circumstances
of the case we had to find not only that Mr Suchak was being dishonest
by the ordinary standards of reasonable and honest people, but that he
himself realised that by those standards his conduct was dishonest. We
further bore in mind that the standard of proof was the civil standard,
on the balance of probabilities, and that, because the allegation was
one of dishonesty, we required cogent evidence to prove the matter.
“We accepted, on the balance of probabilities, on the cumulative
evidence set out above which we regarded as strong and coherent, that
Mr Suchak
knew that the endorsements he put on prescriptions were used by the PPA
to calculate his payments, that he knew payments depended on pack size
and that he was deliberately and knowingly submitting claims he was not
entitled to.”
The committee, therefore, concluded that Mr Suchak’s actions were
dishonest and that he knew he was being dishonest and not just acting
in error. He had knowingly and deliberately defrauded the PPA, and thereby
public funds, of more than £3,000 over some 18 months.
The chairman added that pharmacists were in a position of trust in relation
to the public funds they use in their practices. It was of great importance
that such trust was not abused. Where such abuse was proved it had to
be regarded with seriousness.
The chairman said that an aggravating feature of the case was that Mr
Suchak had twice appeared before the Society’s Statutory Committee
in the past. In 1986 he had been reprimanded for misconduct in the supply
of unlicensed parallel imports. In 1997 he had again been reprimanded
for misconduct after supplying patients with a cheap parallel import
product while claiming payment for the prescribed UK product.
Other aggravating features included Mr Suchak’s attempts to conceal
his wrongdoing, which included encouraging patients to submit erroneous
responses to the PPA investigation.
The only mitigating factors in the case were that Mr Suchak had repaid
the misappropriated funds for the 18-month period and that no patients
had been harmed.
Concluding, the chairman said that Mr Suchak’s marked lack of insight
and the seriousness of the facts of the case meant that removal from
the Register was the only appropriate action.
Mr Suchak was advised that he had three months in which to exercise his
right of appeal. His name was removed from the Register on 27 December
2007.
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