Injured Philly Cops Stay Home Longer Than They Need
The doctors selected by the Philadelphia police union to treat injured cops on Pennsylvania’s generous Heart and Lung disability benefit have questionable practices and often keep cops out of work for much longer than accepted treatment guidelines recommend.
About 20 years ago, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 negotiated the ability to choose its own disability doctors, repeatedly recruiting physicians with questionable practices, according to an investigative report by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The city spent $24 million on salaries for police officers who are too hurt to work in fiscal year 2021, up from $6.7 million in 2008, the Inquirer reported.
This is as Philadelphia has seen high levels of gun violence, and police bosses find themselves with an officer shortage.
This uncommon arrangement, “is rife with potential conflict,” according to medical ethicists, the Inquirer reported. “To maintain a stream of patients and reliable revenue, doctors may feel obligated to keep an officer out of work longer than medically appropriate.”
Of the seven long-term doctors the police union has chosen since 2004, five have histories of alleged questionable behavior, The Inquirer found.
All worked out of small or solo practices “that operated lucrative diet-pill businesses for cash,” the newspaper reported.
One of the doctors lied in 2020, claiming to be a Philadelphia police officer when she was arrested for drunk driving. Two more declared bankruptcy.
The Inquirer raised the question: why did the police union select these doctors, especially in a medical hub like Philadelphia?
The number of officers that doctors deemed unavailable to work had more than doubled since 2017, now numbering one in seven patrol officers, the Inquirer reported.
When the officers aren’t working, their paychecks aren’t subject to state or federal income taxes, essentially giving them a 20 percent raise.
If officers are truly injured on the job, they should be on paid medical leave. This arrangement doesn’t pass the smell test and has cost city taxpayers $24 million in one year alone.
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