By Jane Han
Staff Reporter
Not all patients are created equal, as some show they're healthy enough to roam outside the hospital and take extended trips away from their bedside. Dressed in hospital clothes, they're spotted dining at nearby restaurants, shopping for snacks and even getting their hair done at beauty salons.
They're also the ones that cost insurers billons of won every year in false payouts.
Bogus patients, also known here as "nylon patients," who check into hospitals unnecessarily mostly after car accidents, have long been a headache for local insurance companies, even with numerous crackdown attempts in the past.
But the government says it is going to adopt a new method to weed out the fakes.
Starting Aug. 28, hospitals will be responsible for keeping track of their patients' outdoor trips, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs, Friday. The new regulation is part of a revision to the Automobile Liability Insurance Law.
Hospitals failing to provide the information to insurers and government officials will face a fine of up to 3 million won ($2,430).
This means hospital staff will soon have to pay extra attention to their patients' whereabouts, as many of the bogus ones often take leave without giving proper notice.
The new regulation comes as the economic downturn has recently been pushing up the number of suspected nylon patients, who try to make free money from insurance payouts. The term "nylon" is used to describe phony patients, given the quality and cost of the synthetic fiber in comparison to the natural fiber cotton.
According to the country's financial regulator, the number of insurance scammers rose steeply from 19,272 in 2005 to 30,922 in 2007.
Insurance firms say many of the fakers even go to the extreme of masterminding minor car accidents so that they can check into hospitals for an extended period of time.
The General Insurance Association of Korea said last year that seven in 10 patients injured from car accidents become in-patients, even though 95 percent of them experience minor injuries.
Doctors are said to turn a blind eye toward the growing scams since in-patients help their hospitals' bottom line.