C.R. Bard (NYSE:BCR) said it closed a deal reached last year with federal prosecutors to settle a probe into its brachytherapy business with a $51 million payment.
Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS)
CareFusion settles federal marketing probe for $41M
CareFusion (NYSE:CFN) agreed to pay $41 million to settle a 2-year federal probe into the sales and marketing of its ChloraPrep line of antiseptic wipes.
Colorado doc accused of misconduct with da Vinci surgical robot | MassDevice.com On Call
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Colorado surgeon Dr. Warren Kortz was accused of 14 counts of misconduct after a group of patients of unprofessional conduct, some regarding procedures performed with the da Vinci robot-assisted surgical system.
The complaints against Kort, filed by 11 patients, included allegations that the doctor inappropriately told patients that robot-assisted surgery was the best option for performing kidney transplants.
New HHS budget proposal would add $821M to FDA’s coffers
The 2014 budget proposal for the Dept. of Health & Human Services contains some important boosts in the FDA’s coffers, including a $59 million increase the agency’s medical device review arm compared with 2012.
The new budget would provide the Dept. of Health & Human Services a total of $967.3 billion in outlays and $80.1 billion in discretionary spending, and it includes initiatives that aim to save $361.1 billion over a decade.
Senate chides Medicare for $70M in over-payments for medtech | MassDevice.com On Call
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Medicare has lost about $70 million in unrecoverable sums overpaid to makers of durable medical devices, according to a Health & Human Services Dept. report, and the Senate’s Finance Committee isn’t too pleased.
A bipartisan coalition from the committee chastised Medicare regulators for allowing million of dollars to "go to waste without a serious effort to recover it," according to a a statement from Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)
D+Vice Talk – March 28, 2013
Welcome to the latest edition of the MassDevice.com’s D+Vice Talk, our new webcast, in which we review medical device stories from the last week.
OIG: Docs with financial incentives for implantable devices are “inherently suspect”
The implantable medical device space may be particularly vulnerable to fraud from physicians who receive kickbacks by referring certain brands to their patients, according to a notice from the Dept. of Health & Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General.
Doctors who earn profits from healthcare companies, either through investments or through so-called physician-owned-distributorships, are "inherently suspect" as far as the OIG is concerned.
Ad-Tech brain implant recall gets FDA’s highest-risk status | MassDevice.com On Call
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Federal healthcare regulators gave Ad-Tech Medical Instrument Corp.’s wide-reaching brain implant recall Class I status, the highest-risk category for medical device recalls.
Late last year the Wisconsin-based medical device maker recalled its Macro Micro Subdural Electrodes over concerns that the implanted devices could cause damage to the brain.
Healthcare fraud recovery pays for itself – and then some | MassDevice.com On Call
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — For every $1 regulators spend fighting healthcare fraud and abuse during the last 3 years they recovered a record $7.90, the highest 3-year average return to date.
Healthcare fraud prevention programs collected $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2012, up from about $4.1 billion in 2011. Over the last 4 years the policing initiatives have recovered $14.9 billion, according to an official report.
Too many “never events” in the OR, study finds | MassDevice.com On Call
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — High-stakes surgical mistakes defines as "never events" occur more than 4,000 times per year in the U.S., according to a study by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers.
About half of those incidents involve "foreign objects" left inside of patients following surgery, a quarter of cases involved surgeons who performed the wrong procedure, nearly another quarter involved procedures performed on the wrote site and a small set involved procedures performed on the wrong patient.