Doctor's receptionist tells of changing hundreds of files

Hongsheng Kong. Photo / Martin Sykes

An Auckland medical receptionist has told a court how her boss asked her to electronically update the files of hundreds of patients so they were enrolled at his clinic.

The woman, Creon Ng, was giving evidence yesterday at a depositions hearing in the Auckland District Court.

Her boss, Dr Hongsheng Kong, 42, faces 24 charges of fraud and one of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The Ministry of Health alleges that Kong, who is still working at his Panmure practice, the Hong Kong Surgery, manipulated patient records to obtain more than $1.3 million of Government funding.

Crown prosecutor Mark Woolford directed Ms Ng to several records that he said showed a list of dates on which more than 100 changes were made to patients' files in 2005.

Mr Woolford said the day of the greatest changes involved 451 alterations to patients' files. He said one list was 52 pages long and involved changing the enrolment status of 1630 patients.

Ms Ng told the court Kong asked her to change each patient's status from non-enrolled to enrolled. When she changed each status, she added an alert that would appear when a file was opened to remind a staff member to ask the patient if he or she wished to enrol at the surgery.

Ms Ng was asked about the dates and times she worked and if it was possible another person could have changed the patients to enrolled.

She said it was possible someone else could have used her computer when she walked away from it.

During cross-examination, Kong's lawyer, Paul Davison, QC, asked Ms Ng if she would have had to bypass any alerts that told her that a patient had moved overseas or died when she enrolled them at the surgery.

"It's possible that with the amount of information I was processing ... I simply didn't notice it or pay attention."

Ms Ng said she had been doing the tasks when she was relatively unfamiliar with the system and had not told Kong some patients had left the country.

Kong is also accused of tampering with a patient's diagnosis the same day a laboratory result came back confirming cancer. The patient later died of melanoma.

The Health and Disability Commissioner cleared Kong after a complaint from the patient's family but the matter will be looked at again when the court process is complete.

Kong's former practice nurse Cindy Cheng

told the court she had mistakenly signed and sent letters to another doctor's patient. She said Kong had spoken to her about the error to ensure it did not occur again.