Do doctors have to look for scalpers even if they use their own account? Why do scalpers always hang software on expert accounts | online | expert accounts

"It's said that it's difficult to schedule an expert account, but I didn't expect it to be so difficult," said Ms. Lan, who works in Chongqing. Not only do patients find it difficult to access expert accounts, but even doctors themselves have to find scalpers to access their own accounts.

Recently, Dr. Wang, a renowned expert in thyroid surgery at the General Surgery Center of the First Hospital of Jilin University, learned that the patient Mr. Shen had failed to register multiple times. He called the scalper and found out that the scalper had an account but had to pay an additional 200 yuan.

The expert account ran out just as it was released, and scalpers demanded exorbitant prices

Ms. Lan introduced that she has recently experienced swelling in her neck. After initial diagnosis at the county hospital, she was diagnosed with a suspected tumor and was advised by the doctor to go to a tertiary hospital in the main urban area to register with an expert for further examination.

For the following week, her first thing in the morning was to hold her phone and wait for the hospital to issue an appointment, but strangely, she couldn't make an appointment. "In the blink of an eye, the expert account showed full capacity," she said

A friend suggested trying to find a "scalper", but she had encountered similar situations before and ultimately managed to get an expert account through "scalpers".

"The patient made an appointment according to the process, but couldn't get a number. Why could 'scalpers' be able to make an appointment?" Ms. Lan was full of doubts in her heart. Due to concerns about being deceived, she ultimately did not take her friend's advice. After two weeks, Ms. Lan finally got an appointment with an expert account.

But some patients are not so lucky. Ms. Wang, a resident of Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, goes to the hospital every three months to seek treatment for her daughter's eye disease. But "I have never hung up an expert account for 300 yuan each time, and I can only buy it from a 'scalper' for 900 yuan, which costs an additional 2400 yuan per year."

Patients are unable to register as experts and sometimes have to accept the exorbitant demands of scalpers. For example, Dr. Wenwang's account, which the patient Mr. Shen couldn't get, was given 5 tickets by the scalper. At the same time, the normal registration fee is only 81 yuan, but the markup for scalpers is often two to three hundred yuan.

Two or three times the "scalper premium" is not the limit.

Ms. Lan learned from other patients while waiting in the hospital that someone had booked an expert account through a scalper. "A patient even spent 8 times more money than normal channels to buy an account from 'scalpers', and it is said that they can also specify specific experts and treatment times."

Amazingly, Mr. Shen discovered that besides scalpers, those who sent small cards across the street overpass could also register at breakfast shops and steamed bun shops, and even hospital guides gave him scalper phone numbers.

In fact, it is not news that hospital registration is monopolized by scalpers.

A staff member from a tertiary hospital in Chongqing said, "Expert accounts have become the main target of 'account traffickers', making it even more difficult for citizens to make appointments through normal channels."

How did the scalper ticket come from?

Online scalpers: directly invading hospital registration systems

The reporter found during a visit that the phenomenon of scalpers gathering in the corners of hospitals and asking people "Do you want a number?" has decreased.

"Nowadays, all the 'drug dealers' have been transferred to the internet." A citizen introduced that by entering' hospital registration agency 'in the search bar, some web pages will pop up with a prominent display of' registration agency 'prompts.

Huang Yun, who has been engaged in medical work for more than 10 years, admitted that since the implementation of online appointment registration, the malicious methods of "account scalpers" to grab and hoard accounts have become more information-based.

"Number traffickers" hide on online platforms, using illegal software to aggressively grab numbers and increase prices for resale.

For example, in March of this year, the Chongqing police arrested a group of "internet account traffickers". The group posted information online, searched for patients who needed to register, and used their own registration software to invade the hospital's registration system to grab and hoard accounts.

"After successfully grabbing the account, they sent the hospital registration information to the patients and charged high fees. If one account is less than a few hundred yuan, it will be charged an additional thousand yuan." The police revealed that the gang has accumulated more than 10000 "account grabs", illegally profiting more than 2 million yuan, and the scope of the crime involves more than 10 hospitals in Chongqing and other places.

The gang of "number traffickers" Zhang, arrested by Jiangsu police, used illegal software to automatically access and swipe numbers 172500 times in a hospital in Nanjing within a day. According to some members of the gang, some colleagues have more advanced methods of committing crimes, directly invading the hospital registration system to lock in the source of the number in advance.

"It can be imagined that ordinary patients, even if their whole family goes to battle and scans their accounts without sleep, will not be their opponents," said the investigators.

Internal hospital personnel provide "care"

The monopoly of "scalpers" on "expert accounts" has become a chronic disease that is difficult to eradicate in the medical industry, and there are also internal reasons within hospitals.

It is understood that some "drug dealers" use their past work experience in hospitals to corrupt familiar hospital staff through profit sharing. Someone bluntly stated, "There are technical personnel competing for numbers outside, and medical staff taking care of them inside."

The scalpers are soliciting business from outside and using technological means to grab accounts, while hospital staff provide assistance from within, combining internal and external factors to form a solid community of interests.

Sometimes, the doctor's account has already become a certain resource and has been exchanged by an insider, but the doctor himself is completely unaware of this.

In February of this year, during the special rectification of "number traffickers" in Jiangsu, it was found that 19 hospital staff members became accomplices to "number traffickers" by accepting benefits and kickbacks from them.

Optimize the refund mechanism to prevent "buying while returning"

The crackdown on drug traffickers is also keeping pace with the times.

In 2016, under the deterrence of the joint crackdown on "drug traffickers" by eight departments including the former National Health and Family Planning Commission, "drug traffickers" disappeared for a while.

In February of this year, Jiangsu launched a special campaign to crack down on the problem of "number traffickers", and within three months, four illegal criminal gangs that had been profiting from selling popular expert accounts for a long time were dismantled.

At the same time, health departments and hospitals across the country are continuously increasing their efforts to introduce measures.

The Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center monitors the backend appointment pool in real-time, and has an automatic constraint mechanism for each registered ID card, phone number, or IP address.

The registration app of Peking Union Medical College Hospital stipulates that only patients who have obtained real name authentication and processed medical cards at Peking Union Medical College Hospital can bind, make appointments, and make payments on the app.

According to industry insiders, "Firstly, it is necessary to establish and improve the internal management mechanism of hospitals. Secondly, the public security department should implement strict punishment mechanisms to increase the cost of illegal activities. Thirdly, it is also necessary to crack down on the illegal activities of internal personnel in hospitals who collude with 'number traffickers'. Once internal personnel who make profits by reversing numbers are discovered, they should be investigated and dealt with seriously to eliminate the chain of interests."

On August 3rd, the Chongqing Municipal Health Commission released the Implementation Plan for the Chongqing Improving Medical Experience and Enhancing Patient Experience Theme Activity, which clearly stated: "Improve the default management system, fully implement real name appointment system, strengthen default management, and severely crack down on 'account scalpers'.".

"The most crucial step in improving the default management system is to optimize the refund mechanism." Huang Yun said that hospitals should set a cooling time for refund to prevent the occurrence of "buying while returning" situations and not reserve living space for "account dealers".

He reminded that he hopes that the general public can make appointments through the formal channels of hospitals to prevent economic losses. When encountering illegal and criminal situations such as inflating hospital appointment numbers and prices, be sure to report to the police in a timely manner. Comprehensive CCTV Network and Workers Daily

Completely eliminate the phenomenon of hospital scalpers

We cannot let interests hijack governance determination

It is a clich é d topic to ban scalpers in large hospitals, and in recent years, there have been many actions taken by relevant departments and hospitals to curb the phenomenon of scalpers. However, the situation where scalpers are active in major hospitals still exists. It is undeniable that the emergence of scalpers has complex reasons. Uneven distribution of medical resources, insufficient high-quality medical resources, and imperfect hierarchical diagnosis and treatment system are all soil issues that cannot be ignored behind drug traffickers. It is not easy to completely solve these problems in the short term, so can we only let scalpers run rampant?

Some hospital staff have become accomplices of scalpers and become part of the scalpers' profit chain, which not only violates professional ethics but also is suspected of violating the law. More importantly, in this situation, it means that the hospital is both an athlete and a referee, and how can one expect the management of scalpers to be "cured"? Currently, the rectification of the pharmaceutical industry is underway. From the perspective of scalpers, anti-corruption in the pharmaceutical industry cannot be limited to clarifying the relationship between hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, but should also extend to a serious examination of the relationship between hospitals and scalpers.

Returning to the initial question, currently most hospitals in China implement a real name appointment system for medical appointments. Why can scalpers make appointments? Related reports also show that online scalpers use their self-made account grabbing software to invade the hospital's registration system and hoard accounts. This also exposes loopholes in the hospital registration system and the "buy while returning" mechanism.

At the end of the day, the hospital registration system is the most important channel for patients to access medical services, and it is also the first link for patients to interact with the hospital, directly related to the fair distribution of medical resources and the shaping of doctor-patient relationships. If this system is also distorted by invisible profit motives, exploited by related loopholes, and cannot even ensure fairness in registration, how can we talk about safeguarding patient rights and a fair medical environment?

It must be acknowledged that completely eliminating the phenomenon of hospital scalpers and the problem of tight registration in large hospitals is a systematic project, and it is difficult to achieve its goal in one go. But this complex situation is not a reason to turn a blind eye to the phenomenon of scalpers, nor is it a reason to tolerate hospitals colluding with scalpers. The more scarce registered resources are, the more important it is to ensure fairness in their allocation, rather than being hijacked by distorted interests. Otherwise, it will not only hinder the efforts of the whole society to solve the problem of "difficult and expensive medical treatment", but also go against the construction of a healthy doctor-patient relationship.

Chengdu Business Daily - Red Star News Special Commentator Zhu Changjun