KEY POINTS:
A former Timaru pharmacist fined over $10,000 for fraud and forgery over prescription charges has now been suspended.
Mark Robert Winefield, 50, was sentenced to 200 hours' community work and ordered to pay reparation of $10,865 and $20,000 investigation costs in July after being convicted of four representative charges of using a document to obtain a pecuniary advantage and 18 of forgery.
A Timaru pharmacy owner at the time of the incidents, Winefield has since moved to Wellington but the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal has now suspended him for nine months.
It also censured him and ordered him to pay a proportion of its investigation costs, as yet to be determined.
In September last year Winefield's claiming was audited by HealthPAC, the division of the Ministry of Health responsible for paying pharmacies for prescription medicines and for dispensing drugs.
He had submitted numerous fraudulent claims between January 2001 and August 2004.
All up Winefield had received payments totalling $10,865.67 to which he was not entitled.
He used a variety of methods to obtain subsidies including claiming subsidies for the drug Rubifen when he was dispensing the non-subsidised Ritalin.
Winefield would often claim numerous dispensing fees when in fact the entire prescription was dispensed on a single occasion.
He also forged patients signatures to claim fictitious dispensing fees and forged doctors' initials.
An application for permanent name suppression was declined.
- NZPA
