Croatian Health and Social Welfare Minister Darko Milinovic on Wednesday dismissed media claims that 8,500 patients were exposed to excessive doses of radiation when they had PET CT scans.
"I want patients to have confidence in the health system and I want them to know that the claim that 8,500 patients were unnecessarily exposed to excessive radiation is a blatant lie," Milinovic told a news conference he called to comment on the Medikol case.
He said that he formed a team of experts on Tuesday to check disease indications for 11,570 patients who over a period of three and a half years had around 17,000 PET CT scans at one of the three such departments at Zagreb's "Sestara milosrdnica" hospital, at the KBC Rijeka hospital, and at the KBC Split hospital, opened there by the private Medikol clinic based on the model of public-private partnership.
Answering questions from the press, Milinovic said that Medikol entered the Croatian Health Insurance Agency (HZZO) system in 2005, and that it opened its first PET CT department at the "Sestara milosrdnica" hospital in Zagreb in November 2007, only five days before parliamentary elections. The then minister of health was Neven Ljubicic, who during his term had turned down two requests by the KBC Zagreb to buy a PET CT scanner.
Milinovic said he did not know why the requests had been turned down.
Asked how the HZZO could have signed a contract on an obligation to be taken over by a new government five days before elections, and why he did not terminate the contract as the new minister, Milinovic said that he did not terminate the contract because by doing so he would have denied patients the possibility to undergo that examination in Croatia and that the HZZO would have had to pay the cost of out-of-country PET CT scans.
Milinovic said that until today, when he received a request for the purchase of a PET CT scanner from the head of KBC Zagreb, he had not received such a request from any other hospital, but that he would have granted it, had it been submitted earlier.
The minister said that he did not know if the anti-corruption agency USKOK was investigating some 40 doctors said to have referred patients to undergo unnecessary PET CT scans.
"However, if that proves to be true, if it is established that 40 doctors abused their position and referred patients without a diagnosis to have a PET CT scan, my resignation would be a moral thing to do," Milinovic said.
