 |
| Stryker made payments to 328 doctors in 2007 - Stryker Orthopaedics has plants in Cork and Limerick, Ireland. |
Five makers of orthopaedic implants paid more than $221 million
to surgeon "consultants" in 2007, according to a US Senate committee that plans
to question the payments at a hearing today.
The US healthcare industry is a
huge business and in the past, issues such as payments to researchers by hedge
fund managers for "seminars" on their work and provision by drugs
companies of lavish free junkets to doctors, has raised concerns about the use
of kickbacks within the law but where an obvious conflict of interest is
present.
Today's
hearings in Washington DC, are
titled: Surgeons for Sale? Conflicts and Consultant Payments in the Medical
Device Industry
The companies involved in the payments --
Zimmer Holdings; Biomet;
Stryker Corp.;
Smith & Nephew PLC and the DePuy Orthopaedics unit of
Johnson & Johnson, -- agreed to disclose the payments last
September in settling government allegations that they violated anti-kickback
laws by paying physicians to use their products exclusively.
Four of the companies, with the
exception of Stryker, agreed to pay
$310 million to settle claims that the payments were, in reality,
rewards to
doctors who selected a company's hip and knee implants, even when they weren't
necessarily the best for a particular patient. Stryker agreed to government
supervision but didn't make a payment. The companies didn't admit any
wrongdoing.
The Senate Special Committee on Aging
will discuss the
practice of device manufacturers retaining surgeons as paid consultants in
today's hearing. Sen. Herb Kohl, who is chairman of the
committee, has proposed legislation that would mandate disclosure of consulting
payments by medical-device makers and drug companies.
The Wall Street Journal says that
the government inquiry, by the Justice Department and the
Department of Health and Human Services, questioned a range of financial
transactions between the orthopedics manufacturers and surgeons.
In some cases, a company sales representative would spend one
or two hours in an operating room watching a surgeon implant his company's
device. The company would then pay the doctor for eight to 10 hours of
"training" services, according to findings that government investigators shared
with the committee.
In total, payments to surgeons from these companies amounted to
more than $800 million from 2002 through 2006, the investigation found.
