More complaints against doctors, last year

SINGAPORE — Complaints against doctors increased by nearly 30 per cent while net legal expenses chalked up by the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) for disciplinary proceedings also shot up last year compared to the previous year, according to the council’s latest annual report.

SMC, a statutory board, regulates doctors here.

Last year, SMC received 182 complaints against 242 doctors, up from 141 complaints in 2015. The number of complaints per 1,000 doctors rose from 10.7 to 13.4. “While this constituted an increase of almost 30 per cent compared to the previous calendar year, there was no significant rise in the rate of complaints based on the trend for the past 10 years,” the council noted in its report which was posted online recently. The peak was in 2014, when there were 17.2 complaints received per 1,000 doctors.

The complaints last year mainly concerned alleged breaches of the ethical code and guidelines, and services provided that were not of the quality expected.

But not every complaint results in disciplinary action against doctors. Of 386 cases processed by complaints committees last year (which included cases carried over from previous years), 71 were dismissed and seven withdrawn. Last year, 13 disciplinary inquiries were concluded, with three discontinued, five resulting in censure, suspension and/or fine, and five pending before the Court of Three Judges.

Net legal expenses for disciplinary proceedings — after costs recovered are subtracted from expenses incurred — increased a whopping 81 per cent from S$597,116 in the financial year ended March 31, 2016, to S$1,080,616 in the financial year that ended March 31, 2017. The increase was due to lower costs recovered by SMC for legal proceedings.

However, SMC spent significantly less on expert witness fees for disciplinary proceedings — S$51,731, down from S$237,120 the previous year. It also reduced the amount owed by doctors who had been disciplined — to just over S$204,000, down from more than S$293,000 the year before. The council began publishing its financial statements in 2015 in the wake of calls for greater transparency on the cost of its legal proceedings.