http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/business/22device.html?em&ex=1206417600&en=789362d0e7c59dcd&ei=5087%0A A long-running federal investigation into the orthopedic device industry’s suspected kickback payments to hip and knee surgeons now has the doctors in the spotlight.
Having reached settlements with the five leading makers of artificial joints last year over the payments, the government has been focusing on the many doctors who receive money as the companies’ paid consultants.
“We are going to be looking at those soliciting kickbacks,” Lewis Morris, the chief counsel in the federal office that pursues civil complaints of Medicare fraud, told an audience of hundreds of doctors, company representatives and investors this month in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
The same message has gone out to health care lawyers attending legal education seminars in recent months and, directly from Christopher J. Christie Jr., the United States attorney in Newark, who is overseeing the investigation. Executives say Mr. Christie has addressed sales meetings of the five companies, which reached a settlement last fall to avoid prosecution on charges they had routinely paid illegal kickbacks to surgeons.
Mr. Christie said “ ‘I’ve dealt with the supply issue, now I need to deal with the demand issue,’ ” recalled Edward B. Lipes, the executive vice president in charge of surgeon relationships at the device maker Stryker Corporation, the first of the companies to cooperate in the investigation, which began in 2005.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
