Te Puna employees keep jobs despite fraud convictions

Two healthcare workers have kept their jobs despite being convicted of charges involving thousands of dollars worth of medication. Photo / Supplied

Two Auckland healthcare workers have kept their jobs, despite forging prescriptions for three years to send medicine overseas.

Brothers-in-law Joel Razon, 39, and Carlo Manlutac, 27, are still employed by Te Puna Hauora Primary Health Organisation on the North Shore despite being convicted of charges involving thousands of dollars worth of medication, the Sunday Star-Times reported.

Te Puna Hauora general manager Lyvia Marsden said the organisation had put policies in place to prevent further offending, and the Ministry of Health was satisfied.

The matter had been dealt with confidentially and she had no concerns about the way it had been handled. "We have not broken the law," she said.

The men used various names between 2007 and 2010 to get prescriptions for diabetes and heart disease medication for sick relatives overseas. The frauds were picked up only when prescriptions at a pharmacy went uncollected.

The ministry took the pair to court, where they pleaded guilty to a representative charge of dishonestly obtaining a document.

Clinic coordinator Razon, a registered nurse, also pleaded guilty to accessing a computer for a dishonest purpose. He was sentenced to 150 hours' community work and ordered to pay $3535 reparation. Manlutac, the clinic's health and community support worker, was sentenced to 200 hours' community work and ordered to pay $1124 reparation.

Razon said he sent the medication to his father in the Philippines, where it was not subsidised. His father needed inhalers and blood pressure medication for chronic obstructed airways, he said.

"I'm just kind of scared, my dad's nearly died twice."

Health Minister Tony Ryall and Waitemata District Health Board officials both said the men's employment was none of their business. Mr Ryall said the employment issue was one for the ministry to comment on because it was "operational".

- NZPA