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Inspections at Children’s Clinical University Hospital and Pauls Stradins Clinical University Hospital have revealed misspending of tens of thousands of euros, LETA was told at the Health Inspectorate.

The facts uncovered during the inspections have been forwarded to the Prosecutor General’s Office for legal assessment.

The Health Inspectorate said that the National Health Service had alerted the inspectorate to possible violations and irregularities in the records of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests. Based on this information, the Health Inspectorate conducted inspections at the hospitals.

The Health Inspectorate said it was not authorized to provide more detailed information.

Vita Steina, a spokeswoman for Children’s Clinical University Hospital, explained to LETA that the inspectors at the hospital checked patients’ examination appointments for a time period from 2014 to early 2015. The inspectors found that information in these appointment documents was insufficient and that the government had reasons to pay for these medical examinations.

In Steina’s words, the hospital succeeded in justifying the largest part of the expenses related to these examinations, but the Health Inspectorate still maintains that examination costs worth EUR 14,000 had to be paid by the hospital.

The Health Inspectorate says that the medical examinations ordered by physicians that have not concluded agreements with the National Health Service should not be paid with government money. Furthermore, family physicians are not authorized to order certain medical examinations, such as MRI tests, but many of them ignore this principle.

The spokeswoman said the hospital’s administration had learned its lesson and is now making sure that the family physicians who send their patients for examinations have concluded agreements with the National Health Service. Otherwise, the patients cannot be registered for government-funded tests.