Health insurance company Achmea has clawed back €600,000 from 27 hospitals which had wrongly submitted bills for the cost of contraceptive IUDs, the AD reports on Thursday.

Thousands of women who supplied their own IUDs for fitting were billed for both the doctor’s work and the cost of the device, the paper says.

‘We don’t want to always call it fraud,’ an Achmea spokesman is quoted as saying. ‘Sometimes they are unaware. But we have a number of files which make us think it could be deliberate.’ Achmea now plans to widen its inquiry to all the country’s hospitals.

A spokesman for the gynaecologists’ association NVOG told the paper it is not a question of claiming too much money. ‘Yes, the IUD has been included in the amount of money the hospital gets but that is insufficient to cover the costs,’ the spokesman said.