Six people without a dental licence, 1,898 patients, NT$9.5 million from patients and the insurer: Kinmen prosecutors indict a Jincheng dental clinic's operators and staff, July 2025

Taiwan's National Health Insurance reimburses dental clinics for treatment given by licensed dentists, and the Physicians Act makes practising medicine or dentistry without a licence a crime. Those are the two rules a clinic breaks when it puts unqualified people in the dentist's chair while billing patients and the insurer as if a licensed dentist had done the work. In July 2025 prosecutors on the outlying island of Kinmen set out, in some detail, how one small clinic did exactly that for sixteen months.

According to the Central News Agency, the Kinmen District Prosecutors Office announced on 31 July 2025 that it had concluded its investigation into a dental clinic in Jincheng Township and indicted 12 people: the clinic's two actual operators, surnamed Xu and Yuan, its director and attending dentist, surnamed Liu, six people who worked as dentists without a licence, and three assistants and administrative staff. The Liberty Times reported that Xu and Yuan funded the clinic and handled recruitment, equipment, accounting and supplies, that Yuan was himself a licensed dentist who practised there, and that one of the six unlicensed practitioners also worked as a dental assistant and administrative staff.

Between 17 August 2023 and 12 December 2024 the six treated 1,898 patients while being presented as licensed dentists, both outlets reported. Prosecutors put the proceeds at NT$9,525,603, and the Liberty Times gave the breakdown as NT$178,350 in registration fees paid by patients, NT$4,710,898 in claims paid by the National Health Insurance Administration, and NT$4,636,355 in self-pay fees that patients handed over without knowing the provider was unlicensed. The charges are illegal practice of medicine under the Physicians Act, making and using false entries in business documents under the Criminal Code, and fraud committed jointly by three or more people. CNA quoted prosecutors as saying the scheme harmed Kinmen patients' right to lawful medical care and affected the insurer's management of medical services and the accuracy of its payment approvals.

The mechanism is simple. A real licence holder served as director and another licensed dentist sat among the operators; registration fees were real and insurance claims were real; and people without qualifications did the clinical work under cover of that paperwork. Neither outlet reported where the six had trained or whether they had ever attempted Taiwan's licensing examination. What mattered to prosecutors was that they held no licence and were presented to patients as if they did.

For a student, two lessons. First, a clinic is only as licensed as the individual treating you, so ask for the practitioner's name and check it on the Ministry of Health and Welfare's register rather than relying on the licence displayed for the director. Second, anyone with an unrecognised foreign dental or medical degree who is offered 'clinic work' while waiting for an exam should understand what the Kinmen indictment calls it: illegal practice, false business records and fraud, with the employee charged alongside the employer.