Doctors killed patients for money

last updated 8 January 2015

Lodz, Poland

Polish prosecutors have charged two doctors in Lodz with “failing to assist” 18 patients—who subsequently died—in exchange for kickbacks from local funeral parlors. Police have been investigating the gruesome bribery ring in Poland’s second-largest city since January, when the national newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza ran an exposé. The paper claimed that ambulance crews were delaying their arrival at medical emergencies and sometimes administering improper drugs on purpose. The crews—which in Poland typically include doctors, not EMTs—then tipped off certain funeral parlors of the resulting deaths and collected a fee. Investigations are now under way in at least 10 other Polish cities.