SINGAPORE: A neurosurgeon who was fired by SingHealth after he accessed patient records without authorisation lost his suit against the healthcare group for wrongful dismissal on Tuesday (Jan 21).
Dr Tan Tung Wee Eddie accessed the records of more than 70 patients not under his care in the course of calling out perceived wrongdoings of another neurosurgeon, Dr Chen Min Wei.
Dr Tan claimed to have been acting as a whistleblower, and argued that he should have been protected from retaliation.
He sought damages including the loss of future earnings pegged at more than S$4.4 million (US$3.2 million), citing his inability to find employment as a neurosurgeon.
But Justice Chua Lee Ming found that SingHealth was fully justified in dismissing Dr Tan.
The judge also found that Dr Tan’s actions were “more likely driven by his single-minded desire to take down Dr Chen”, and that any harm his career had suffered was “self-inflicted”.
Dr Tan held the position of consultant neurosurgeon at the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) when he was dismissed in March 2022.
The matter emerged in 2020, when doctors were not allowed to move between hospitals under a COVID-19 pandemic protocol.
Dr Tan, then an associate consultant, was stationed at Sengkang General Hospital (SKH) doing mostly “service-related work”.
Dr Chen, one year Dr Tan’s junior and also an associate consultant, was deployed to Singapore General Hospital (SGH), where he had more exposure to complex neurosurgery cases.
In September 2020, Dr Tan complained to a head of neurology and a deputy medical director that Dr Chen was “running” a clinic in SGH’s ear, nose and throat (ENT) department.
He complained that this was against the neurology department’s rule that associate consultants should not run or manage patients at subspecialty clinics.
Dr Tan alleged that Dr Chen was benefiting from “favouritism”, and had been running the clinic for months “under the protection” of Dr Ramez Kirollos.
Dr Kirollos was a senior consultant neurosurgeon at NNI specialising in skull base surgeries. This was a subspecialty Dr Tan was interested in.
Dr Tan’s superiors investigated his claims and found that Dr Chen only attended the ENT clinic as an observer, and not to run it or get patients for himself.
They realised there were areas for improvement to ensure that training opportunities among associate consultants were equal, and decided to take steps towards this.
They also reduced Dr Tan’s calls at SKH and made changes to ensure that Dr Tan and Dr Chen had equal opportunities for calls at SGH.
They informed Dr Tan of their findings and measures. But he maintained that Dr Chen had gained a significant advantage over his peers through dishonest means, and that not punishing him was a show of favouritism.
Over the next few months, Dr Tan continued to raise his suspicions about Dr Chen to his superiors.
He escalated his claims of “rampant favouritism” to SingHealth’s group CEO, who appointed a review panel to look into the complaints in November 2020.
The panel completed investigations in February 2021 and found that Dr Tan’s claims were unsubstantiated.
Dr Tan made further allegations when a patient Dr Chen operated on in January 2021 became a quadriplegic. A committee of inquiry (COI) found that there was no professional misconduct in the case.
In June 2021, Dr Tan made another complaint when a patient died after a surgery performed by Dr Chen and Dr Kirollos. Another COI cleared both doctors of negligence or criminal acts in this case.
At around the same time, a whistleblower report was made against Dr Tan, alleging that he had accessed the medical records of one of Dr Chen and Dr Kirollos’ patients.
The COI was also tasked to look into this, and found that Dr Tan had committed a data breach by accessing records from Dr Chen and Dr Kirollos’ cases without authorisation.
It recommended a separate COI be convened to look into the data breach, and this was done in October 2021.
During interviews with the third COI, Dr Tan admitted to looking at operative notes and scans from Dr Chen’s surgeries at SGH and Dr Chen’s cases at the ENT clinic.
The COI recommended giving Dr Tan a warning, but when the matter was escalated to the SingHealth Disciplinary Council, the council unanimously decided to dismiss Dr Tan.
The basis given for this was his repeated data breaches and blatant disregard for patient confidentiality and the rules on data security.
SingHealth also made a police report against Dr Tan, but decided against filing a complaint with the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) to give him a chance to move on with his career.
However, when SingHealth received a letter from Dr Tan’s lawyers demanding reinstatement and compensation, it decided to make a formal complaint to SMC, given his lack of remorse.
The police gave Dr Tan a stern warning in lieu of prosecution in August 2023, but the doctor told the officer who handed him the warning that he rejected it.
On Tuesday, Justice Chua said it was not for the doctor to carry out his own investigations by breaching patient confidentiality and tossed his suit, while ordering him to pay costs to SingHealth.
Justice Chua said: “It was purely fortuitous that when the COVID-19 restrictions were implemented, Dr Chen was locked down at SGH and that gave him more opportunities to work with Dr Kirollos on skull base cases.
“It is unfortunate that (Dr Tan’s) envy of Dr Chen got the better of him and eventually led him to breach patient confidentiality in his endeavours to take down Dr Chen.”
The judge also noted that Dr Tan had asked for his name to be redacted if his claim succeeded.
The doctor’s reasons were that he did not wish to be “famous”, that his children would grow up spoiled if they thought he was someone special and potentially rich, and that he was concerned that his family in Malaysia might receive threats or be kidnapped for ransom.
As the claim failed, Justice Chua said this request was irrelevant. He added that the reasons given would not have justified redaction anyway.
