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Stockport Drs Co-operative
226 - 230 Wellington Rd Sth
Stockport
SK2 6NW

Telephone: 0161 429 6498

26 September 2006

 Sample Preventing Financial Fraud Policy

Although a GP surgery might seem an unlikely place for fraud to occur particularly as staff holding positions of responsibility have often been in post for many years and are well respected. Unfortunately, the small business nature of General Practice can provide the opportunity for fraud to occur.

In practice it is much easier to prevent fraud than detect fraud after it has been committed. More often than not an effective Fraud Prevention Policy is based on limiting the opportunities for fraud to take place.

For example if one person is responsible for many aspects of the practice’s financial control from payroll to petty cash, from cheque signing to bank account reconciliation, how or when would the GP partners ever know if something was amiss?

From time to time we have read in the medical press of instances where for example a fictitious employee has been included in the practice payroll and been paid for a considerable time unnoticed.

The quality and outcomes framework now suggests that practices produce a Fraud Prevention policy for staff undertaking financial transactions.

Following a number of requests from practices your LMC has produced a paper identifying potential areas of risk to General Practice along with procedures, which could be implemented to eliminate or substantially reduce this risk.

Whilst the list is not exhaustive and will probably need to be adapted to suit the working practices of individual surgeries, it should provide a good starting policy for practices. I would welcome comment from practices on any areas of risk they feel may have been omitted.

Throughout the document wording in italics provides an opportunity for practices to personalise the policy inserting either the name or title of the relevant person responsible for a particular task or an amount.

The sample policy is available for download via this link.

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