Hospital cracks down on outpatient scalping

From May 5, patients should pre-book expert outpatient services at Shanghai Children's Medical Center, the hospital announced yesterday.

You can book the next treatment while receiving therapy or by calling 114 or 962296 to get a registered number for the service. Or you can go online to www.91985.com, www.114-91.com or www.91120.com to get a number. The real name is required.

After booking the service, patients must be at the hospital before 10am for morning appointments or before 2pm for those in the afternoon.

The hospital authorities said the new policy was a bid to crack down on scalping ?? illegal agents selling registered numbers for outpatient appointments ?? and to avoid patients' families queuing very early in the morning.

As a leading pediatric hospital in the city, SCMC has about 50 experts on hand. But their services are only available one or two days a week and aren't enough to meet patients' demands.

Some family members have to queue very early to get a number, a must for registering.

"Illegal agents take advantage of the system by getting the numbers early and selling them at a high price. Once the number of a famous cardiovascular expert was sold at 800 yuan (US$115)," said Xia Lin, an SCMC official.

"Though the hospital authorities have cooperated with the police to carry out campaigns against illegal agents, it is difficult to solve the problem completely."

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