'Phantom practitioners: accreditation fraud, corruption and health professionals' by Bruce Baer Arnold and Wendy Bonython in (2019) 27(1)
Australian Health Law Bulletin 14 comments
The Independent Commission Against Corruption
(ICAC) report on Eman Sharobeem and action against
Raffaele Di Paolo, Vitomir Zepinic, Vincent Berg,
Dusan Milosevic and Balaji Varatharaju, and raise ques-
tions about misrepresentation by people who hold themselves out as health practitioners but are unregistered,
and in some instances have used fake documentation to
obfuscate their lack of training.
The authors argue that
It is axiomatic that trust is a foundation of the
Australian health system: trust in the competence and
ethical behaviour of health professionals alongside trust
in the efficacy of regulatory bodies such as the Austra-
lian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA),
courts, tribunals and professional boards that identify
and respond to misbehaviour. That trust is eroded by
people who successfully hold themselves out — in
essence make unsubstantiated claims — to be entitled to
engage in professional practice.
Those claims may have an entirely fictive basis, with
for example an individual falsely claiming that they
received training from an accredited institution, passed
tests of competence and duly received certification by an
educational institution and/or a professional body. Claims
may instead involve an individual who did indeed
receive the required training and pass the corresponding
tests but subsequently was either deregistered and unable
to lawfully engage in professional practice or whose
practice was restricted, for example through a requirement that the professional not deal with patients unless
closely supervised by a peer.
A recent report by the NSW ICAC explores one
instance of a “phantom” practitioner: a high-profile
individual, in a position where trust was particularly
important, who invented professional qualifications, gained
financial and social benefit from that identity crime and
resisted investigation. The report highlights questions
about corruption rather than merely appropriation of a
status to which the supposed practitioner was not entitled.
It offers a perspective on recent prosecutions of several
fake general practitioners and specialists, alongside
action by regulators.
