Doctor Arrested for Forging 4 Competency Certificates to Obtain Medical Practice License from MOH

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A 35-year-old doctor specializing in aesthetic services forged four certificates of competence (COCs) and submitted them to the Ministry of Health (MOH) to obtain a license for his medical practice.

Bernard Tan Wen Sheng had not participated in two of the COCs, which were related to workshops.

The MOH uses COCs as a key component of the regulatory process to determine whether to approve a clinic license application.

According to Deputy Public Prosecutor Ariel Tan, they are essential to a system that guarantees the public visiting a licensed aesthetics clinic can be sure that the medical personnel providing care are qualified and capable of safely carrying out their desired aesthetic procedures.

Tan entered a guilty plea on Monday, June 30, to two counts of forgery and one count of providing a public servant with false information. His sentencing will take into account two additional forgery charges.

The prosecutor said that Tan made the decision to open his medical practice, Bay Aesthetics Clinic, at Marina Bay Link Mall by February 2023 at the latest. He then applied to MOH for a clinic license.

DPP Tan informed the court that in order to receive a COC, a candidate needs to pass the necessary test and attend a workshop for a specific aesthetic procedure. Once the applicant passes, the COC will be issued by the Aesthetic Dermatology Education Group (ADEG).

Tan's clinic was inspected via video-link on February 20, 2023, by a manager from MOH's Hospital Ambulatory Care & Research Regulation Department.

She sent him an email the following day requesting COCs for three services: chemical peels, fillers, and injections of botulinum toxin.

After realizing that he lacked some of the necessary COCs, Tan made the decision to modify his wife's COCs in order to create his own.

After his wife passed the required tests in 2017, Tan was granted four COCs.

Chemical peels, fillers, botulinum toxin injections, and assisted lasers or intense pulsed light for hair removal (IPL) were the four procedures for which the certificates were associated with workshops.

Tan then covered his wife's details on the COCs by placing his name on each one after printing it out on paper in a font size comparable to hers.

Then, with his name neatly above the line with the workshop attendee's name, he scanned each certificate individually.

Tan emailed the manager the scanned copies of the fake certificates at 2:30 pm on February 21, 2023.

DPP Tan informed the court that although Tan had lost the COCs for filler and botulinum toxin injection workshops in 2017, Tan had actually participated in them. Tan had not gone to any workshops about IPL hair removal or chemical peels.

The manager emailed Tan again on February 27, 2023, to inform him that ADEG was unable to locate any documentation of his alleged attendance at the last two workshops. She then requested an email confirmation from ADEG confirming his attendance at the pertinent workshops, or the original COCs.

The following day, Tan emailed to confirm that he had taken the classes in May 2017.

The DPP said, as quoted by The Straits Times, "(He also claimed that) he was simply unable to find the original COCs for these two workshops."

"The accused even added that the COCs he had sent to the complainant looked 'grainy' because his family members had scanned them in after there was a fire in his house in October 2017 which caused water damage to some of his documents," the prosecutor added.

On March 13, 2023, the application was finally accepted, and Tan was permitted to offer services that included injections of botulinum toxin and filler. After attending workshops for them in April of that year, he offered IPL and chemical peel hair removal services.

He was later charged in court in 2024, although court documents did not explain how his offenses were discovered.

Tan will be sentenced on July 29.

Tan is no longer a director of two companies, Bay Aesthetics and Bay Medical, according to a June 30 search with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority.

Additionally, his name could no longer be found on the Singapore Medical Council's database of registered healthcare professionals.

Related topics : Singapore crime
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