Following an anonymous complaint, a team of Auditors - Inspectors of the Regional Office of the National Transparency Authority (NTA) conducted an audit of a private pediatrician's practice in Central Macedonia during the period June 2020 - May 2022, to check the legality of pediatric vaccine distribution, management and administration practices.
Findings of a team during the on-site audit:
- 60 packages of pediatric vaccines, which he/she had prescribed up to 8 months earlier, were found in the pediatrician's office, from which the authenticity strips had been removed, in violation of Article 3, para. 2b of Regulation (EC) No. GD 24a/22-2-2012 (Government Gazette B' 545/2012).
In the above manner, pediatrician K.M. altered the traceability of the batches of vaccines used and the authenticity strip affixed to the prescriptions did not correspond to the vaccine used, which is critical for public health, e.g. in case of adverse reactions or batch recalls. He/she took actions to distort professional competition by maintaining in his/her practice an illegal stock of childhood vaccines for the purpose of serving his/her customers, in violation of paragraph 2 of Article 21 of Law No. 3418/2005 (Code of Medical Ethics).
During the investigation that followed, the prescription and prescription execution profile of the pediatrician during the period August 2019 - June 2020 was analyzed and it was found that especially the vaccine prescriptions were almost universally executed in a single pharmacy. From the testimonies of parents of children and other parties involved, as well as the comparison of vaccination dates with the analysis of the time of execution of prescriptions, an unjustified delay in the electronic execution of the specific prescriptions by the private pharmacy was found, in violation of Article 4, paragraph 4 of Decree 121/2008. It is characteristic that after the on-site inspection of the NAD inspectors at the pediatrician's surgery, both the selective execution of prescriptions at this pharmacy and the unjustified delay in the execution of prescriptions by the pharmacy ceased.
It is noted that during the audit it was also found that a second directed prescription of vaccines from the pediatrician K.M. to another pharmacy took place in the past (year 2017), which however ceased its operation at the beginning of 2018.
The Audit Report of the NTA was forwarded to the Medical Association of Thessaloniki and the Pharmaceutical Association of Thessaloniki in order to proceed with the disciplinary control of the pediatrician and the pharmacist, respectively, as well as to the National Organisation for Medicines (EOF) and the National Organisation for Healthcare Services Provision (EOPYY) in order to consider further actions under the current provisions.