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WELLAND, Ont. --

The death of a pediatrician has raised concern among his colleagues about a provincial audit system critics have deemed grossly unfair. The body of Anthony Hsu was found in Lake Ontario last week. Hundreds of people gathered for a memorial yesterday. An autopsy on the 57-year-old pediatrician determined that the cause of death was consistent with drowning, and police ruled out foul play. Friends and family suspect suicide. "I think his death was unnecessary; it was a tragedy, and I think it was directly attributable to the harassment and the persecution of an out-of-control bureaucracy," Keith Meloff, a neurologist based in Timmins, Ont., said. In an audit by OHIP's medical review committee last year, Dr. Hsu was found to owe more than $108,000 because his paperwork wasn't satisfactorily completed. Although he repaid the money, in part using money from his RRSPs, he felt the audit had tainted his reputation in the community. "I think there should be a judicial inquiry; personally I think there should be an inquest," said Dr. Meloff, who has been an opponent of the review process since he was audited and ordered to repay about $20,000. Dr. Meloff added that he believes the pediatrician likely had underbilled the system.

After his audit, the soft-spoken Dr. Hsu had somewhat reluctantly joined the growing number of physicians protesting against what they called an unfair system.

A detailed review of the pediatrician's audit conducted after his death showed numerous faults, said Farouk Dindar, founder of Ontario Doctors for Fair Audits.

"We've had complaints about this audit process at multiple levels, but in his case he was a victim of all of the bad things that we know of," Dr. Dindar said.

Doctors have complained about aspects of the audits such as extrapolating charges and the use of outdated billing codes, he said.

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