… is a truly ornate way of writing bribing surgeons to use what they made, but okay.
I mean I don’t really expect the Wall Street Journal to write this way, but it does, at least when covering what it seems to consider the delicate issue of bribery.
Wielding and entice skew eighteenth century to me… The salesman comes into the doctor’s office, gives him an envelope with $500,000 in it and says “Hearty thanks good sir. You do honor us by using our goods in your surgeries. Depend upon our constancy in wielding payments for your enticement.”
Doesn’t really sound like modern Chicago, where orthopedic surgeons at Rush University are in trouble because a whistle-blower has filed lawsuit.
The surgeons “knew that in order to maintain their celebrity status with [device maker] Zimmer, they would have to continue to be among Zimmer’s biggest customers, and they accomplished this goal by scheduling and billing Medicare for hundreds, if not thousands, of joint replacements surgeries annually that did not comport with the Medicare Rules and Regulations,” the complaint said.
Zimmer bribed the surgeons – the more implants they implanted, they more money Zimmer gave them – and the clever hungry lads “booked impossibly busy schedules and often left residents to perform complex procedures, but billed Medicare as if they were there.”
So – the youngsters, earning $50,000 a year or so, perform the complex procedures. The surgeons do nothing, earn millions, and on top of the millions get hundreds of thousands in bribes from Zimmer for product usage.
You can understand their thinking. Zimmer doesn’t care how well the thing’s implanted; it cares that it is implanted. So get someone, anyone, anyhow, to implant the thing for chrissake…
July 10th, 2010 at 10:11AM
One of the whistleblowers is on the orthopedics faculty at Rush. It should make for interesting departmental meetings. I wonder if the Freedom of Information Act could be used to get the minutes?
From what I’ve read, medical whistleblowers usually end up alone, ostracized from their colleagues, hospital, and university. This happens whether or not the whistleblower is right. The best example is the guy who blew the whistle on the cardiologist, cardiothoracic surgeon, and hospital in Redding, California. They were doing cardiovascular procedures when the patients did not need them. The physician community, the hospital, and the hospital employees were mad at him for whistleblowing. The whistleblower ended up having to leave the area.
It would be hard to underestimate the backlash that hits whistleblowers.
July 10th, 2010 at 11:42AM
Brad,
Although I’m unfamiliar with Illinois law, in the vast majority of states departmental meetings at hospitals are generally privileged information under applicable state credentialing and peer review statutes. Interestingly, some of the concerns you note re the treatment of whistleblowing colleagues are relevant to these statutes, which can, because of their power, be used as both the sword and the shield (they are generally not intended to provide legal space for professionals to shoulder out others, but this happens. See here).
July 10th, 2010 at 4:57PM
Academic institutions, such as the University of Minnesota, often have no retaliation statements as protection for whistleblowers. How effective such rules are is debatable.
July 10th, 2010 at 4:59PM
With respect to Zimmer’s devices-
This reminds me of something we used to say, facetiously, when I was at 3M: “You can buy a better product, but you can’t pay more money.”