A high-ranking executive at a private hospital in southwestern China has been accused of beating an employee because she did not manage to talk a patient into visiting the facility following an online consultation, the Legal Evening News reported Monday.

Zhang Wenzong, executive director of Kunming Xinke Hospital in Yunnan province, allegedly assaulted a staff member from the hospital’s online customer service division during a meeting to discuss her unsatisfactory work performance. According to a screenshot of the police document received by the news outlet, in the incident on June 25, Zhang got into an argument with the employee — also surnamed Zhang — and began beating her. She is currently being treated for injuries, including spinal fractures, at another medical facility.

“The boss told me that the hospital bought ad placements online, and the cost [to the hospital] for each online appointment is high, around 4,000 yuan [$600],” the employee told the Legal Evening News, “so we need to convince patients to come to our hospital for treatment.”

It’s common for some private Chinese hospitals to institute patient quotas for doctors, who receive a percentage of the treatment fees. Zhang said that Kunming Xinke Hospital, which specializes in health conditions more prevalent in men, had set a monthly target of 450 patients for June. But the medical institution had only seen about 200 patients by June 24.

An investigation by the Legal Evening News also found that the Kunming hospital is among the ubiquitous but controversial Putian institutions — a network of about 8,600 private hospitals owned by people from the city of Putian in eastern China’s Fujian province. In 2016, a cancer patient died after undergoing expensive but unproven treatment at a Putian institution he found online, sparking harsh public criticism that such hospitals prioritize profits over patients’ well-being.

When Sixth Tone contacted Kunming Xinke Hospital on Tuesday, an employee surnamed Lin said Zhang Wenzong was unavailable for media interviews due to the ongoing investigation. While Lin confirmed that the hospital buys online ads for its services, he denied that there were compulsory patient quotas for online customer service employees. Sixth Tone’s call to the police department in charge of the case went unanswered on Tuesday.

A hospital administrator told the Legal Evening News that Zhang, the employee, was reprimanded because she argued with a patient during an online consultation. Zhang acknowledged that she insulted the patient over the phone after becoming impatient with the inquiry.

Zhang’s role as online medical consultant has also raised questions. Though Lin said Zhang’s responsibility was only to help patients with appointments, Zhang said that she also offered medical consultations to patients and “tried to bring them to the hospital for treatment.”

Online consultants working for hospitals have come under scrutiny lately. In one recent medical fraud case in southwestern China, male consultants at a Guizhou hospital specializing in men’s health — including prostate problems and erectile dysfunction — were required to change their gender to female in their online profiles to attract more male patients through social media posts.

Editor: Bibek Bhandari.

(Header image: The official website of one of the so-called Putian hospitals. IC)