Senators Want Answers. Reports: Excessive, Risky Artery Procedures on Vets, Medical Devices: ProPub.
- 'Senators Demand Answers About “Alarming” Reports of Excessive & Risky Artery Procedures on Veterans,' Ed. ProPublica, Feb. 18, 2023. - Hours after ProPublica & The Wichita Eagle published allegations of kickbacks for the “egregious” use of medical devices at a veterans hospital, Kansas’ Republican senators have questions for the VA secretary.
Just hours after ProPublica, in collaboration with The Wichita Eagle, revealed serious allegations of illegal kickbacks and alleged patient harm at a veterans hospital in Kansas, the state’s U.S. senators urged the Department of Veterans Affairs to contact impacted patients and say whether the involved doctors and medical device company have been held accountable. The U.S. congressman who represents the hospital’s district is also calling for answers.
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In a letter sent on Thursday, “regarding the alarming reports of lapses in patient safety & improper use of taxpayer dollars,” the Republican senators, Jerry Moran & Dr. Roger Marshall, asked the VA for a “full timeline and accounting” of the agency’s knowledge of, and response to, the allegations, & to reach out to all veterans who had received care at the catheterization lab of Robert J. Dole Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Wichita between 2011 and 2018.
During this period, according to a whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2017, representatives from Medtronic, the world’s largest medical device maker, treated health care workers to steakhouse dinners, Apple electronics and NASCAR tickets, and in turn, the company secured a lucrative contract with the veterans hospital. Medtronic’s representatives also allegedly “groomed and trained” doctors at the hospital, who then deployed the company’s devices, even in cases when it was not medically necessary.
The doctors in question were contract workers, paid hourly by the facility, according to the lawsuit, and thus were incentivized to do longer and more complex interventions, which would increase their payment. In several of the procedures, the doctors deployed more than 15 devices at a time, deviating from best practices, according to an internal investigation. One used 33. “I want to say the term ‘egregious’ was used,” former facility director Rick Ament testified last December in a deposition for the whistleblower suit...https://www.propublica.org/article/medtronic-kansas-veterans-affairs-cathlab