15% of auto victims inpatients only in name

On the increase are auto accident victims who pretend to undergo treatment at hospitals as inpatients but vacate their rooms after applying for insurance money. These people tend the hospital only during daytime when employees of insurance firms come out for a roll call or worse, go back to their respective workplaces after registering for hospitalization.

The Association of Non-life Insurance said Aug. 1 that a midnight inspection of 1,309 hospitals in 29 cities between April of 1997 and May this year found that 5,384 of 37,200 who were hospitalized as result of auto accidents were not in their beds. The figures translate into 14.5 out of every 100.

By profession, fake patients were most likely to be proprietors of their own businesses (13.2 percent), followed by housewives (10.8 percent) and taxi drivers (10.1 percent). By age group, 27.4 percent of them were in their 40s and 26.7 percent in their 30`s.

The rate of fake patients has increased from 12.1 percent in 1997 to 12.7 percent in 1998, 16 percent last year and 21 percent this year.