Chen Jianliang, vice director of the neurological surgery department, and Liu Lijun, head nurse of the department, have also been suspended.

The city is launching a one-month campaign to stamp out arbitrary medical fees and tighten medical service standards, the city's health chief Jiang Hanping said yesterday at an emergency meeting.

Shenzhen Party chief Li Hongzhong ordered a crackdown on irregularities in the city's medical sector after CCTV exposed the overcharging by the hospital last Thursday.

Yu Quntao, a local resident, found the hospital had charged his father-in-law, who was identified only as Sun, for 25 hours' use of a perspiration monitor in a single day, the CCTV report said.

Sun stayed in the hospital for 67 days until he was discharged Dec.4.

On another day, the hospital charged him for 27 hours of monitor use. The CCTV report said Yu paid nearly 30,000 yuan (US$3,750) for Sun's usage of the perspiration and heartbeat monitor, a sum large enough to purchase three monitoring devices.

An initial investigation by the city's health bureau, pricing bureau and disciplinary departments revealed that the overcharging had been caused by careless registration. The patient was charged for using the monitor for three hours during an operation Oct. 9, and the nurse in charge of his ward added the three hours to his 24 hours of use. In the other instance it was a computer error, investigators said.

The hospital acknowledged that they had charged 2,429.55 yuan more than they should have, which amounted to about 1 percent of the total fee paid by the patient which was 211,956.68 yuan. But an expense of 280.60 yuan was not charged.

Investigators are probing other allegations in the CCTV reports such as a claim that doctors in the hospital received kickbacks from medicine makers.