healthy4u: health care corruption

Health Care Corruption, "No Dirty Little Secret," but "An Open Sore" - Lessons from India for the US

<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/health%20care%20corruption">Health care corruption</a> is widely prevalent around the globe, but remains the great unmentionable. Introduction: Global Health Care Corruption We have discussed health care corruption whenever we have an opportunity, but rarely does the topic appear in the English language media or in English language medical and health care journals, particularly in the US.  Some might think that this is because health care corruption is not so prevalent in the US and other "developed" countries.  However, our <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/07/43-believe-that-us-health-care-corrupt.html">most read post of all time</a> was about a Transparency International global survey that found that fully 43% of Americans believe our health care is corrupt.  A recent editorial in the BMJ(1) opened thus, <blockquote class="tr_bq">Healthcare is a high risk sector for corruption. Best estimates are that between 10% and 25% of global spend on public procurement of health is lost through corruption. This is big bucks. Total global spend on healthcare is more than $7 trillion each year. Corruption takes many forms, depending on the country’s level of development and health financing system. The United States, for example, lost between $82bn and $272bn in 2011 to medical embezzlement, mostly related to its health insurance system. No country is exempt from corruption. Patients everywhere are harmed when money is diverted to doctors’ pockets and away from priority services. Yet this complex challenge is one that medical professionals have failed to deal with, either by choosing to enrich themselves, turning a blind eye, or considering it too difficult. Transparency International, a watchdog on these matters, defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, which in healthcare encompasses bribery of regulators and medical professionals, manipulation of information on drug trials, diversion of medicines and supplies, corruption in procurement, and overbilling of insurance companies. This is no dirty little secret. It is one of the biggest open sores in medicine.</blockquote> When health care corruption is actually discussed in polite circles, including the scholarly literature about medicine and health care, the discussion usually refers to corruption elsewhere.  In particular, in developed countries, discussion of health care corruption usually focuses on less developed countries. Thus, maybe it should not be a surprise that the editorial by Jain et al accompanied another BMJ article about health care corruption in India. Yet by reading between their lines, both articles have global application, and are just as relevant to those nations in which the powers that be seem to have smugly concluded that health care corruption is only a problem in benighted third world countries. A Personal View on Health Care Corruption in India David Berger a UK trained general practitioner (GP), discussed the corruption he found while volunteering in India.(2)  His introduction was, <blockquote class="tr_bq">'The corruption strangles everything, Sir. It’s like a cancer.' Accompanied by apologetic shrugs and half smiles, statements like this are commonly heard in India. I knew this was the case before I went to work as a volunteer physician in a small charitable hospital in the Himalayas, but what I didn’t realise was how far the corruption permeates the world of medicine and the corrosive effect it has on the doctor-patient relationship.</blockquote> Berger raised several issues: Neoliberalism and Privitization <blockquote class="tr_bq">The healthcare system itself is a model of inequity; it is one of the most privatised in the world, with out of pocket expenditure on healthcare at more than 70%, far higher even than in the United States. This phenomenon is at least partly the result of the neoliberal World Bank policies of the 1990s, which mandated a reduction in public financing of healthcare, fuelling growth of the private sector. The latest in technological medicine is available to people who can pay, albeit at a high price,...</blockquote> Kickbacks to Physicians for Referrals This is a common form of corruption in India. <blockquote class="tr_bq">all investigations attract a 10-15% kickback to the referring doctor. One day, the marketing executive for this clinic had turned up at the hospital with an envelope full of cash—the commission for investigations ordered in the past few months. The senior doctor refused it and stipulated that in future the commission was to be paid back to patients, which is why the resident had to sign the form. The country’s doctors and medical institutions live in an 'unvirtuous circle' of referral and kickback that poisons their integrity and destroys any chance of a trusting relationship with their patients.</blockquote> Kickbacks from Pharmaceutical Firms <blockquote class="tr_bq">There is also widespread corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, with doctors bribed to prescribe particular drugs. Tales are common of hospital directors being given top of the range cars and other inducements when their hospitals sign contracts to prescribe particular antibiotics preferentially. I met a former pharmaceutical sales executive who left the industry, sickened by the corrupt practices he was supposed to employ. Working for one of the largest drug companies in the country, he was expected to bribe doctors with money and luxury goods. The crunch came when a doctor demanded that the company fly him to Thailand for a holiday and then provide him with prostitutes at his home. When the company representative queried this, his manager told him to comply, and he felt he had no choice but to resign, protesting that he was 'not a pimp.'</blockquote> Huge Fees Charged to Medical Students <blockquote class="tr_bq">Endemic corruption extends to medical studies themselves. In another 'unvirtuous circle,' students can have to pay very large “donations” (perhaps $200 000 or more, some 20 times the average doctor’s annual salary) to get into the rapidly increasing number of private medical colleges and to get on to sought after postgraduate training schemes. This means that doctors can have high levels of debt or family obligation when qualifying, which is a strong incentive against working as generalists in rural areas and favours them practising technological medicine for maximum profit in urban areas to try to recoup their investment.</blockquote> The US Parallels All the issues above have clear parallels in the US.  But in the US, hardly anyone talks about health care corruption as a local or national problem.    Neoliberalism and Privitization The US is known for its increasingly private health care system, pushed by the ideology of "neoliberalism" or "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/economism">economism</a>."  US health insurance is mostly provided by private, for-profit corporations, not non-profits, or government agencies.  US hospitals and hospital systems are increasingly private, as are other organizations that provide direct health care, e.g., <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/hospices">hospices</a>.  US physicians are increasingly <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/corporate%20physician">corporate employees</a>.  India may be more privatized, but the US is close behind.  Kickbacks to Physicians for Referrals We have frequently posted about cases in which there was good evidence that physicians in the US got <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/kickbacks">kickbacks</a>, or bribes.  Most involved legal settlements of cases in which there were allegations of widespread kickbacks.  Some of them involved kickbacks for referrals (e.g., the settlement involving Omnicare in 2013, look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/10/there-they-go-again-omnicare-to-settle.html">here</a>).  On the other hand, resolution of cases involving kickbacks to small groups of physicians for referrals are so common in the US that we rarely discuss individual examples. For example, I found the following headlines from the last few weeks: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://6abc.com/news/nj-arrests-more-than-12-in-alleged-kickback-scheme/134025/">NJ Arrests More than 12 in Alleged Kickback Scheme</a> <a href="http://www.nj.com/morris/index.ssf/2014/06/randolph_doctor_jailed_for_20_months_for_role_in_massive_kickbacks_scheme.html">Randolph Doctor Jailed for 20 Months for Role in Massive Kickback Scheme</a> <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/ahmed-626942-indictment-million.html">O.C. Grand Jury Indicts 15 Doctors  </a>  </blockquote> We have also written extensively about how <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/corporate%20physician">corporate physicians</a> are pushed to avoid "leakage," that is referral of patients to health care facilities not owned by their corporate employees (e.g., look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-steward-health-care-will-superbowl.html">here</a>).  Kickbacks from Pharmaceutical Firms We have posted about numerous examples of widespread <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/kickbacks">kickbacks</a> given by health care corporations, particularly pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies, to physicians to enhance their prescriptions for or use of their products.  Most recent examples include legal settlements by Pfizer about kickbacks to promote use of Neurontin (one of many by that company, look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/06/justice-delayed-is-justice-denied.html">here</a>); by Medtronic to promote use of its pacemakers and defibrillators (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/06/fool-me-twice-boehringer-ingelheim.html">here</a>); and by Johnson and Johnson to promote use of Risperdal (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/11/another-and-huge-22-billion-settlement.html">here</a>).  Moreover, we have discussed many examples of physicians paid as "consultants" or given "honoraria" for talks by companies whose goal was to use these physicians as "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/key%20opinion%20leaders">key opinion leaders</a>," actually covert marketers for their drugs or devices.  Many of the <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/conflicts%20of%20interest">conflicts of interest </a>we have discussed actually seemed to involve kickbacks or bribes, even though some physicians and policy-makers like to refer to them as "collaborations" with industry to increase "innovation."  Huge Fees Charged to Medical Students The huge tuition charged US medical students, their huge resulting debt, and their resulting tendency to pursue procedural specialties rather than cognitive specialties, particularly primary care, have become cliches. So it seems that the US has some of the same possible risk factors for corruption as does India, that there are many cases in the US of activities that are called corruption in India, and that a near majority of US citizens feel their health care is corrupt.  But health care corruption remains a largely taboo topic in the US.  Summary: Some General Approaches The editorial by Jain et al that to its authors' credit emphasized that health care corruption is a global problem suggested some general approaches to corruption(2) <blockquote class="tr_bq">Good governance, transparency, and zero tolerance must form the basis of any anti-corruption strategy. Changes must be implemented in society at large for reform to be sustained. Better governance requires rigorous legislation and functioning administrative mechanisms to provide fiscal oversight. Ethical standards of conduct must be explicitly established and staff held accountable for their performance. Punitive measures should be available to serve as a deterrent. Honest behaviour must be rewarded. These policies may be ineffective, however, unless healthcare professionals are assured of a decent salary and fair opportunities for professional growth</blockquote> Also <blockquote class="tr_bq">Simple and effective channels for complaints must be established, and appropriate legal support and protection provided to whistleblowers. Looking deeper, underlying issues such as education and social justice must not be forgotten if the battle against corruption is to be sustained and eventually won. Answers may also lie outside the world of medicine. </blockquote> Note that we have discussed all these approaches: <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/accountability">accountability</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/transparency">transparency</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/governance">governance</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/boards%20of%20trustees">boards of trustees</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/boards%20of%20directors">boards of directors</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/ethics%2F%20integrity%20policies">ethics and integrity policies</a> , <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/impunity">impunity</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/legal%20settlements">legal settlements</a>, and education about corruption (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/12/lancet-emphasizes-threats-to-academic.html">here</a>).  Not that any of them have been widely adopted. So to repeat an ending to <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/07/43-believe-that-us-health-care-corrupt.html">one of my previous posts</a> on health care corruption....  if we really want to reform health care, in the little time we may have before our health care bubble bursts, we will need to take strong action against health care corruption.  Such action will really disturb the insiders within large health care organizations who have gotten rich from their organizations' misbehavior, and thus taking such action will require some courage. References 1.  Jain A, Nundy S, Abbasi K. Corruption: medicine's dirty open secret.  Brit Med J 2014.  Link <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g4184">here</a>.  2.  Berger D. Corruption ruins the doctor-patient relationship in India.  Brit Med J 2014.  Link <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g3169">here</a>.

Health Care Corruption, "No Dirty Little Secret," but "An Open Sore" - Lessons from India for the US

Health care corruption is widely prevalent around the globe, but remains the great unmentionable.Introduction: Global Health Care Corruption We have discussed health care corruption whenever we have a…

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01 Jul 2014

"Texas VA Run Like a ‘Crime Syndicate,’ Whistleblower Says" - Can Reports About the Benefits of EHRs at the VA Healthcare System Be Trusted?

More and more is leaking out about alleged executive malfeasance at the Veteran's Administration healthcare system in the U.S. This article just appeared: <blockquote class="tr_bq">Texas VA Run Like a ‘Crime Syndicate,’ Whistleblower Says May 27, 2014 <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/exclusive-texas-va-run-like-a-crime-syndicate-whistleblower-says.html">http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/exclusive-texas-va-run-like-a-crime-syndicate-whistleblower-says.html</a> For years, employees at a Texas VA complained that their bosses were cooking the books. For years, the VA insisted there was no widespread wrongdoing. New whistleblower testimony and internal documents implicate an award-winning VA hospital in Texas in widespread wrongdoing—and what appears to be systemic fraud. Emails and VA memos obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast provide what is among the most comprehensive accounts yet of how high-level VA hospital employees conspired to game the system. It shows not only how they manipulated hospital wait lists but why—to cover up the weeks and months veterans spent waiting for needed medical care. If those lag times had been revealed, it would have threatened the executives’ bonus pay. What’s worse, the documents show the wrongdoing going unpunished for years, even after it was repeatedly reported to local and national VA authorities. That indicates a new troubling angle to the VA scandal: that the much touted investigations may be incapable of finding violations that are hiding in plain sight.  “For lack of a better term, you’ve got an organized crime syndicate,” a whistleblower who works in the Texas VA told The Daily Beast. “People up on top are suddenly afraid they may actually be prosecuted and they’re pressuring the little guys down below to cover it all up.”</blockquote> Read the linked article in its entirety.  It contains document images of altered electronic orders, the EHR system apparently being used for "creative storytelling" to allow for "good metrics", and an employee "performance plan" evaluation submitted by a whistleblower containing perverse incentives: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1174555-4-performanceobjs.html" target="_blank">... The VA’s 2012 performance plan</a>, provided to The Daily Beast by the whistleblower, contains five critical elements to evaluate success, each one containing multiple sub-criteria. But critical element No. 5, the “Results Driven” component that contains the “wait time” criteria, is worth 50% of the overall score. That’s as much as all the other elements combined.</blockquote> I won't delve into the gory details of the article further...read it yourself...but I do raise the following issues: 1.  The VA EHR system VistA CPRS has been touted as among the best EHR's in the world, based on reports that come out of the VA. <ul><li>Can these reports on the benefits and safety of VistA CPRS be trusted, considering what may be going on systemically regarding altered data related to "making the numbers" and getting bonuses? </li></ul><ul><li>It is well known that EHRs slow clinicians down, through annoying alerts and reminders and other decision support, cryptic and complex order-entry processes, and the general need to navigate multiples screens and templates to perform what used to take seconds on pen and paper.   Is it also possible that the inability of the VA system to meet its care obligations in a timely manner is related to adverse effects on productivity of the EHR system itself?</li></ul> 2.  EHR audit trails are an automatically-generated log of user activities, such as viewing, printing, altering or deleting an electronic document or other data.  They are the only way to authenticate an electronic record as complete and unaltered, since all paper/handwriting cues are gone in the computer world. <ul><li>It may be of interest to investigate the electronic audit trails generated by the VA electronic health records (EHRs)... or the lack thereof, for as I understand it those audit trails are often only active for VIPs ("very important persons") in the VA VistA CPRS EHR system. </li></ul><ul><li>Even worse, in the commercial sector hospitals admit they can alter or delete the EHR system audit trails - see my post at <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/12/44-of-hospitals-reported-to-oig-that.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/12/44-of-hospitals-reported-to-oig-that.html</a>.  It's likely the same applies in the VA, and it would be of concern that any audit trails of test and visit scheduling or other activities could be undergoing a "disappearing act" in the wake of this scandal, in addition to the actual test/scheduling data itself.</li></ul> It is unfortunate that this scandal sheds doubt on claims made about activities, including EHR use, at the VA hospitals.  I myself have taught my students that the VA model has been a model for others to emulate, at least as far as EHRs are concerned. ------------- As an important aside: I am personally familiar with very odd events at the VA, namely in 1995.  At <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/06/computer-and-other-mysteries-at.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/06/computer-and-other-mysteries-at.html</a> regarding the computer-related radiation brachytherapy debacle at the Philadelphia VA Hospital I wrote [and I am adding some additional comments now in brackets]: <blockquote class="tr_bq">... I have some familiarity with odd events at the Philadelphia VA Hospital. (Not including the fact that I spent a few months there as a medical intern in the early 1980's). In the mid 1990's I took my father there for evaluation for increased service-related disability. He had been treated for skin lesions in the Army in WW2 and after by the VA with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler%27s_solution">Fowler's solution</a> (an arsenical) and as a consequence of this (even then-outdated and dangerous) treatment, had developed widespread basal cell carcinomatosis over a major portion of his body, with chronic bleeding and discomfort. I accompanied my father to the exam but did not identify myself as an MD, only as his son. [I was on vacation and was rather casually dressed.  I looked like any other schlep bringing his elderly veteran father in for care.] My father was seen in an evaluation by several physicians and students (arsenic-caused basal cell carcinomatosis is quite rare now) in my presence, and he was then handed his (paper) chart to take with him back to the main desk.  [As we were walking] I told my dad I wanted to look at the note. The note by a physician who'd seen him stated (paraphrasing): <blockquote class="tr_bq">"Mr. Silverstein said he'd taken more than the prescribed dose of arsenic for years, and even shared it with his wife."</blockquote> My father and I were shocked and dumbfounded. He'd said no such thing, and being a retired pharmacist of 40+ years, thought anyone making such a statement would have had to have been insane. (My mother had even harsher words when she heard about this.) [Along the lines of, "ARE THEY CRAZY???"] Needless to say, I was upset. I [identified myself and] confronted the physician who wrote the note, but that physician [a relatively young woman] would not change it, bizarrely claiming that they "remembered my father telling that story in a visit several years prior." Needless to say, such a claim violated all the precepts of medical information integrity of which I was familiar.  [I wondered to myself, "what type of utter imbecile would even say such a thing to a Yale physician/medical informatics faculty member?"] In an initial attempt to counteract this disability exam sabotage, I actually crossed out the statement in the chart, writing "this is untrue" or words to that effect and signed my own name. The head of the Philadelphia VA Hospital would not return my calls on this matter. That is, until <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Brown">Jesse Brown, then Secretary of the Department of Veterans' Affairs</a>, inquired directly a few days later. Unknown to the VA examiners, my father had been sent for the disability exam after reporting problems to Sen. Jay Rockefeller's office about prolonged delays in having his case heard.  Sen. Rockefeller's staff [specifically, Ms. Charlotte Moreland, <a href="http://votesmart.org/public-statement/25153/retirement-of-charlotte-moreland">http://votesmart.org/public-statement/25153/retirement-of-charlotte-moreland</a>, who my mother had befriended through many telephone conversations] had set up the exam! Sen. Rockefeller's staff was rather upset at the story I reported upon my return to New Haven about the bizarre chart fabrication at my father's VA disability exam, and apparently relayed the story up the chain of command, as it were. After that, the head of the Philadelphia VA Hospital really, really wanted to speak to me and called me at Yale several times. He wanted to set up a phone conference between me, himself, and the doctors who'd seen my father. I told his administrative assistant that there was "nothing to talk about", and that the false statement in my father's chart would be removed. Period. I think it was. My father's increased disability was granted in the end, but what was going on here with disability exams was never fully investigated to my knowledge (having done disability exams myself years prior for the regional transit authority, police, fire etc. in Philadelphia, I suspected an "incentive" program to deny vets a disability determination). If I had not examined my father's chart, we might have never known a reason for his being turned down. A culture of honesty and accountability seemed lacking then, and seems lacking now.</blockquote> In retrospect, it seems there may indeed have been an "incentive program" for, in essence, limiting positive disability determinations by sabotage, thus causing negative determinations on benefits. Ironically, among other experiences, it was the impoverished experiences at the Phila. VA as an intern in 1981, with a decade of computer experience under my belt at that time, that led me to pursue a career in Medical Informatics. With inadequate staff and resources, especially at night when a medical student and I and a minimum of nurses covered something like 50 patients - and at that early stage of my career I am honestly admitting that I did not know what I was doing, really - and large amounts of time wasted on paperwork, I thought there had to be a better way via computing. I never expected that computers in medicine could become a tool for "creative data alteration" for executive enrichment, an impediment to good care, and a risk in and of itself, as was outed by a whistleblower recently in Athens, Georgia as at <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-could-not-make-this-up-if-i-tried.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-could-not-make-this-up-if-i-tried.html</a>. -- SS May 28, 2014 Addendum:   Also see "How VA Clinics Falsified Appointment Records" at <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/28/va-clinics-falsified-records_n_5402547.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/28/va-clinics-falsified-records_n_5402547.html</a> -- SS

"Texas VA Run Like a ‘Crime Syndicate,’ Whistleblower Says" - Can Reports About the Benefits of EHRs at the VA Healthcare System Be Trusted?

More and more is leaking out about alleged executive malfeasance at the Veteran's Administration healthcare system in the U.S.This article just appeared:Texas VA Run Like a ‘Crime Syndicate,’ Whistleb…

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28 May 2014

JOBSCAN - Project Officer to Address Corruption in the Pharmaceutical and Health Care Sector in the UK

It is extremely rare that I see a job posting relevant to Health Care Renewal, but amazingly saw one today: <div align="left"> Job Opportunities at Transparency International </div> <div align="left"> <div> <h3>Project Officer, Corruption in Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Sector, Transparency International UK</h3> Application Closing Date - 03 Jan 2014 Job Start Date - February 2014 or as soon as possible thereafter Duration - This appointment is for one year initially Pay Scale - £26,000-30,000 pa depending on experience Location - Transparency International UK, London, UK <a href="http://www.transparency.org/whoweare/work/project_officer_corruption_in_pharmaceutical_healthcare_sector_transparency" target="_blank">View the whole posting</a></div><div> </div><div>I would urge anyone interested to apply soon.  The deadline is coming up.  I am glad to see that Transparency International in the UK is addressing corruption in health care.  </div><div> </div><div>Roy M. Poses MD on Health Care Renewal </div></div>

JOBSCAN - Project Officer to Address Corruption in the Pharmaceutical and Health Care Sector in the UK

It is extremely rare that I see a job posting relevant to Health Care Renewal, but amazingly saw one today: …

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13 Dec 2013

Health Care Revolving Door Roundup

Increasingly, the regulatory and law enforcement functions of the US government in the health care sphere seem to be blending with the management of large health care organizations.  One mechanism for this is the "revolving door," the constant interchange of personnel between government agencies and corporate management.  Here is a list of some of this year's interesting cases of people transiting the revolving door between US government agencies that are supposed to regulate health care organizations or enforce the relevant laws and the organizations subject to these regulations and laws.   Note that this list may not be complete.  It is difficult to keep track of these transitions.  Leader of Health Care Fraud Section of Philadelphia US Attorney's Office to Teva Pharmaceuticals <a href="http://www.mainjustice.com/2013/03/03/former-health-care-fraud-chief-in-philly-joins-teva-pharmaceuticals/">Via</a> MainJustice.org in March, 2013, <blockquote class="tr_bq">John Pease, who led the government and health care fraud section in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia, has left the Justice Department for a job with a pharmaceutical company. Pease, 45, is a new senior counsel at Teva Pharmaceuticals, where he oversees government investigations of the company for the Americas.  'I was just ready to try something different,' Pease said in an interview.</blockquote>  Leader of US Department of Justice Fraud Section in Charge of Health Care Issues to Law Firm as Defender of Companies and Senior Executives The initial notice again was <a href="http://www.mainjustice.com/2013/03/25/health-care-fraud-unit-chief-sheldon-joins-quinn-emanuel/">via</a> MainJustice.org in March, 2013 <blockquote class="tr_bq">Sam Sheldon, the deputy chief in the Criminal Division's Fraud Section who oversaw health care fraud prosecutions, is leaving the Justice Department to join Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.</blockquote> Mr Sheldon's new job was made clear on the firm's <a href="http://www.quinnemanuel.com/attorneys/sheldon-sam-s.aspx">website</a>, <blockquote class="tr_bq">Sam Sheldon is head of the firm’s Health Care Practice Group.  He is a trial lawyer who represents companies and senior executives in litigation before the United States federal government including Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services, and other law enforcement and regulatory agencies.</blockquote> FDA Deputy Commissioner for Global Regulatory Operations and Policy to Mylan This <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/30/us-mylan-fda-idUSBRE93T12D20130430">story,</a> in April, actually made it (briefly) to Reuters, <blockquote class="tr_bq"> n">Generic drugmaker Mylan Inc said on Tuesday it hired Deborah Autor, deputy commissioner for global regulatory operations and policy at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to help oversee its global regulatory strategy.</blockquote> Leader of Health Care Fraud Enforcement of Philadelphia US Attorney's Office to Law Firm as Industry Defender <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-07/morrison-foerster-vinson-elkins-cravath-business-of-law.html">From Bloomberg</a>, in August, 2013, <blockquote class="tr_bq">Marilyn May, a False Claims Act litigator at the U.S. Justice Department, joined Arnold & Porter<a href="http://topics.bloomberg.com/arnold-%26-porter/"></a> LLP’s Washington office as litigation counsel with a focus on healthcare, pharmaceutical and medical device industry defense work.  May was the head of healthcare fraud enforcement in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She coordinated healthcare fraud cases and investigations as well as handled False Claims Act cases involving pharmaceutical and medical device companies, hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare providers, the firm said. </blockquote> The law firm's <a href="http://www.arnoldporter.com/professionals.cfm?action=view&id=6531">website</a> states, <blockquote class="tr_bq"> Her litigation practice focuses on pharmaceutical, medical device and healthcare defense matters.</blockquote> Summary In each of these cases, a person with responsibility for regulation of and/or law enforcement for health care organizations went through the revolving door to either work for health care corporations subject to such regulation and/or law enforcement, or work for legal firms that specialize in defending such corporations and their leaders in regulatory and law enforcement actions. As far as I know, none of these instances was the least bit illegal.  However, like previous examples of the revolving door, they raise the concern that people in government regulation or law enforcement who think that they may have future lucrative job prospects helping health care organizations attenuate regulation and law enforcement may not be the most enthusiastic, aggressive, or persistent regulators or law enforcers.  Why would one want to upset one's future employer? While these cases of the revolving door are legal, they are clearly conflicts of interest in the sense that the prospect of such future employment likely may increase the risk of compromising a government official's devotion to serving the public and enforcing the law, if not in the legal sense.  In some particular case, the revolving door may actually lead to corruption according to the Transparency International definition, abuse of entrusted power for private gain, if not according to the legal definition.  Thus the continuing occurrence of government officials blithely transiting the revolving door no doubt was a reason that more than 40% of the public consider the US health care sector to be corrupt (see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/07/43-believe-that-us-health-care-corrupt.html">this post</a>.) True health care reform would require curtailing the severe sorts of conflicts of interest created by the revolving door.  This might require both improving pay and working conditions for government regulators and law enforcers, and specific laws to prevent immediate transitions from being a regulator/ law enforcer to handling corporate responses to or defenses of such regulation and enforcement. Of course, I can already hear the protests of those people who decry paying more for government or increasing government regulation.  I can at least hope that the protests are not from those who personally profit from the current seemingly corrupt system.

Health Care Revolving Door Roundup

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07 Aug 2013

Why Do People Think US Health Care is Corrupt? - The Examples of Amgen, Mallinckrodt Settling Charges of Giving Kickbacks to Doctors to Induce them to Prescribe Their Products, While No Individual Suffers Negative Consequences

We recently <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/07/43-believe-that-us-health-care-corrupt.html">posted </a>a discussion of the results of <a href="http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013">Transparency International's 2013 corruption barometer</a>, focusing on the US results.  43% of survey respondents thought US health care is corrupt.  Our coverage, apparently the only substantial discussion of the US results published in the US, got star ranking for a while <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1iw48a/43_believe_that_us_health_care_is_corrupt_64_that/">on Reddit</a>.  But many anonymous commentators dismissed the survey results as coming from a naive public who does not understand health care economics. I submit that one can recognize corruption without a degree in economics.  In fact, as we discussed in the initial post, there is a lot of evidence for the prevalence of health care corruption in the US, other developed countries, and globally.  It is just that such evidence rarely gets discussed in public (the <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/anechoic%20effect">anechoic effect</a>, as we say on this blog), probably because doing so might make those who are profiting from the corruption uncomfortable. So today let me summarize just the latest evidence about US health care corruption, as defined by Transparency International as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.  (Note that the Transparency International definition of corruption, which is an ethical, not necessarily a legal definition, at least in most jurisdictions.) Amgen An <a href="http://www.toacorn.com/news/2013-07-25/Front_Page/Amgen_pays_15_million_in_whistleblower_lawsuit.html">article</a> in the Thousand Oaks [CA] Acorn described the legal settlement, <blockquote class="tr_bq">Amgen Inc. paid the United States more than $15 million this month as part of a settlement agreement to resolve allegations that the biopharmaceutical company used financial kickbacks to persuade doctors to prescribe the cancer drug Xgeva to their patients. The settlement resolves a qui tam, or 'whistleblower,' lawsuit filed Jan. 20, 2012, in federal court by William Davis and Spencer Miller—two Amgen employees who work at the company’s Thousand Oaks headquarters. Davis, sales planning director for Amgen’s oncology business unit, and Miller, a senior marketing manager at the company, alleged their employer violated both the Medicare Anti- Kickback Statute and False Claims Act—two laws that aim to prevent Medicare fraud and abuse.</blockquote> The allegations were that Amgen used a somewhat complex and deceptive strategy to pay doctors who prescribed its drug, using a survey about practice patterns as a cover story, <blockquote class="tr_bq">According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Amgen used what the company called 'Deep Dive' contracts—or data purchase agreements—in an effort to boost sales of Xgeva, which was approved by the FDA in late 2010 for use by certain cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. The drug is most commonly prescribed to prevent bone fractures in patients who have been diagnosed with a certain type of tumor after it has spread to the bones. Under Amgen’s original Deep Dive program, the company paid doctors to fill out an Internet-based survey, which asked how they were treating patients with bone cancer and which drugs they used. 'That’s not illegal to do,' said Abraham Meltzer, assistant U.S. attorney in the Los Angeles civil fraud section. 'A lot of pharmaceutical companies purchase data legitimately on how various conditions are treated.' But Amgen altered its Deep Dive program, Meltzer said, by increasing the amount of money it offered to pay the doctors who specifically prescribed Xgeva to their patients.</blockquote> Also, <blockquote class="tr_bq"> The U.S. attorney’s office also alleged that Amgen paid oncologists and urologists to participate in market research surveys, audience response sessions and advisory programs that publicized the benefits of Xgeva.</blockquote> As is typical in such cases, the settlement did not require any contrition on Amgen's part.  Instead, <blockquote class="tr_bq">In a prepared statement emailed to the Thousand Oaks Acorn on Tuesday, Amgen denied all allegations of wrongful conduct. 'Amgen settled this matter to avoid the delay, uncertainty, inconvenience and expense of protracted litigation,' the statement read.</blockquote> As is also typical, there seemed to be no negative consequences for the human beings who must have engineered the "Deep Dive" contracts and the payments to the oncologists and urologists.  Nor was there any overt consideration of Amgen's sketchy recent ethical record, as described by the Acorn, <blockquote class="tr_bq">This month’s settlement is not the first time the biopharmaceutical giant has been held to answer for kickback allegations or false claims charges. In December 2012, Amgen pleaded guilty to illegally selling the drug Aranesp, an anti-anemia drug, for uses or doses not approved by the FDA, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. As part of the false claims case, which was also brought on by a whistleblower lawsuit, Amgen agreed to pay a $612-million civil settlement to the U.S. and individual states, as well as $150 million in criminal penalties. Then in April, the Thousand Oaks-based company paid the U.S. another $24.9 million to settle whistleblower allegations that it gave financial kickbacks to long-term care pharmacy providers in exchange for switching Medicare and Medicaid benefi- ciaries from a competing drug to Aranesp, a DOJ press release states.</blockquote> We <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/05/amgen-ceos-prosper-despite-or-because.html">discussed</a> the guilty plea in the cases of Aranesp misbranding and alleged kickbacks to pharmacists.  Also, in 2013, we noted that Amgen settled allegations that it overpriced its products sold to government health programs in 36 states.  We also noted that despite, or perhaps because of all this misbehavior, the current CEO of Amgen received over $13 million in compensation in 2012, while his predecessor walked away with over $9 million that year. Mallinckrodt A small news item from the Associated Press, <a href="http://www.nanaimodailynews.com/business/st-louis-drug-maker-mallinckrodt-to-pay-feds-3-5m-to-settle-lawsuit-over-doctor-kickbacks-1.543318">via</a> the Nanaimo (MO) Daily News, outlined this legal settlement, <blockquote class="tr_bq">A St. Louis-based drug maker will pay $3.5 million to settle allegations that it paid doctors to prescribe 'outdated, third rate' antidepressants and sleep aids, the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco announced.</blockquote> In particular, <blockquote class="tr_bq">The lawsuit alleged the company targeted doctors who prescribed the type of antidepressants and sleep pills Mallinkrodt manufactured.</blockquote> Again, the company was allowed to settle without admitting anything. <blockquote class="tr_bq">'While we deny the allegations in this matter, we are glad they are resolved,' company spokeswoman Erica Abbett said in a statement. </blockquote> Again, although human beings would have had to engineer any payments to the doctors to induce them to prescribe, no human beings suffered any consequences as a result of this settlement. Mallinckrodt, a storied corporate name, had been acquired by Covidien, and then was spun off again as a separate company in June, 2013 (look <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/mallinckrodt-pharmaceuticals-declares-its-independence-again/article_24973adf-37ef-5d86-b81b-a441edd4289d.html">here</a>).  It had been acquired in 2000 by Tyco International, which later spun off its health care operations as Covidien.   According to its <a href="http://services.corporate-ir.net/SEC/Document.Service?id=P3VybD1hSFIwY0RvdkwyRndhUzUwWlc1cmQybDZZWEprTG1OdmJTOWtiM2R1Ykc5aFpDNXdhSEEvWVdOMGFXOXVQVkJFUmlacGNHRm5aVDA0TmpZNU16QTNKbk4xWW5OcFpEMDFOdz09JnR5cGU9MiZmbj1Db3ZpZGllbnBsY19ERUYxNEFfMjAxMzAxMjQucGRm">2013 proxy statement</a>, Covidien's CEO received over $10 million in total compensation in 2012. [Note that Tyco was the subject of one of the major scandal stories of the early 21st century.  In 2005, at a time when law enforcement authorities were still pursuing actions against elite corporate executives,  its former CEO and CFO were convicted of stealing millions from it (see USAToday <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2005-06-17-tyco-timeline_x.htm">summary</a>)]. Summary - Why do People Think US Health Care is Corrupt?   Again, the Transparency International definition of corruption is abuse of entrusted power for private gain.  I would argue that pharmaceutical companies are entrusted with the power to honestly sell drugs whose benefits to patients outweigh their harms.  I would further argue that paying physicians, who are entrusted with providing the best possible care to each individual patient, to prescribe drugs which may not be the best treatment for individual patients is an abuse of both the company's and the physicians' entrusted power.  Further, such payments provide private gain to the physicians.  They also may increase revenues for the company who makes these payments, and very likely these increased revenues lead to better compensation for those in the company who authorized, directed or directly provided the payments, that is to private gain for these corporate insiders.  Thus it seems that kickbacks to physicians to prescribe drugs is a form of corruption. While both cases above were settled without admissions of guilt, such settlements do not refute the contentions that kickbacks were given.  Why would the law enforcement officials have brought the cases in the absence of evidence, and why would the companies have settled if the cases were completely baseless?  So I would argue that these settlements provide evidence, although not legal proof, that kickbacks were given.  People with far more legal knowledge than I possess have remarked on the absurdity of settling cases of alleged wrongdoing without any acknowledgement or statement of the facts (see posts <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/09/biovail-settles-and-judge-explains-why.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/will-citigroup-ruling-challenge-health.html">here</a>). We have posted lots of instances of conflicts of interest affecting health care, many of which likely involved payments providing private gain that raised the risk of abuse of entrusted power.  We have also discussed many instances of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/crime">crime</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/kickbacks">kickbacks</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/bribery">bribery</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/fraud">fraud</a> other kinds of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/health%20care%20corruption">health care corruption</a>. So were the people who answered the Transparency International survey naive and foolish about health care corruption?  Or did they have reasonable beliefs about a topic that the powers that be really do not want to discuss?

Why Do People Think US Health Care is Corrupt? - The Examples of Amgen, Mallinckrodt Settling Charges of Giving Kickbacks to Doctors to Induce them to Prescribe Their Products, While No Individual Suffers Negative Consequences

We recently posted a discussion of the results of Transparency International's 2013 corruption barometer, focusing on the US results. 43% of survey respondents thought US health care is corrupt. Our…

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25 Jul 2013

Pharmaceutical Industry "'Mobilised' an Army of Patient Groups to Lobby Against" Improving Clinical Research Integrity

I had guessed that this sort of thing was going on all the time, but being kept very well hidden.  Now we have some more evidence. An<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jul/21/big-pharma-secret-drugs-trials"> article</a> in yesterdays Guardian showed how the pharmaceutical industry is using pet patient advocacy groups in a public relations campaign to defeat calls for for measures against <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/suppression%20of%20medical%20research">suppression</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/manipulating%20clinical%20research">manipulation</a> of clinical research. In summary, <blockquote class="tr_bq">The pharmaceutical industry has 'mobilised' an army of patient groups to lobby against plans to force companies to publish secret documents on drugs<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/drugs" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Drugs"></a> trials.</blockquote> More specifically, <blockquote class="tr_bq">The strategy was drawn up by two large trade groups, the <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/PhRMA">Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)</a> and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), and outlined in a memo to senior industry figures this month, according to an email seen by the Guardian.  The memo, from Richard Bergström, director general of EFPIA, went to directors and legal counsel at <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Roche">Roche</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Merck">Merck</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Pfizer">Pfizer</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/GlaxoSmithKline">GSK</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/AstraZeneca">AstraZeneca</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Eli%20Lilly">Eli Lilly</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Novartis">Novartis</a> and many smaller companies. It was leaked by a drugs company employee. The email describes a four-pronged campaign that starts with 'mobilising patient groups to express concern about the risk to public health by non-scientific re-use of data'. Translated, that means patient groups go into bat for the industry by raising fears that if full results from drug trials are published, the information might be misinterpreted and cause a health scare. The lobbying is targeted at Europe where the European Medicines Agency (EMA) wants to publish all of the clinical study reports that companies have filed, and where negotiations around the clinical trials directive could force drug companies to publish all clinical trial results in a public database.</blockquote> The argument for continuing to allow clinical trials to be suppressed was to be, <blockquote class="tr_bq">The patient groups focus on the concern that if companies release all of their clinical trials data, the information might be misconstrued, or intentionally cherry-picked, and spark damaging health scares around certain drugs or vaccines.</blockquote> The Guardian story did not disclose which patient groups were cooperating with this effort. By the way, the other parts of this strategy involved using scientific associations and academics to push the pharmaceutical companies' agenda, <blockquote class="tr_bq"> Two other strands of the campaign include discussions with scientific associations about the risks of data sharing, and work with other businesses that are concerned about the release of trade secrets and confidential data. The final strand calls, in the long term, for a network of academics across Europe that can be called on to correct false interpretations of the data. </blockquote>Several of the large multinational drug companies contacted by the Guardian issued the usual non-denial denials <blockquote class="tr_bq">In response to queries from the Guardian, GSK said: 'This is not something we are doing. One of the reasons we're involved in this is we want more companies to move towards greater transparency. I don't think it's for us to be mobilising patient groups to campaign on a negative level.' A Roche spokesperson said the company consulted patient groups to understand their concerns about clinical trials, but 'to our knowledge Roche has not been involved in any EFPIA's potential activity in mobilising patient groups to express concern about the risk to public health by non-scientific re-use of data'. A Lilly spokesman said: 'Lilly is committed to working with Europe-based patient advocacy organisations for the benefit of patients in a way that is true to the EFPIA code of practice and Lilly's integrity in business policy.'</blockquote> Summary We have long discussed and decried how vested interests, chiefly health care corporations with services and products to sell, have<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/manipulating%20clinical%20research"> manipulated clinical research</a> to make their wares look better, and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/suppression%20of%20medical%20research">suppressed research </a>whose results, even if manipulated, could not be made sufficiently favorable. This has resulted in making drugs and devices look more efficacious and/or less hazardous than they really are.  See <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-call-to-restore-integrity-of-clinical.html">this post</a> for our latest discussion, and information on the latest effort to counter suppression and manipulation of clinical research. It is not surprising that pharmaceutical companies do not want to have to publish every clinical trial they sponsor, or expose their manipulations of these trials.  Instead, the Guardian article suggests that companies and their trade associations, including the US based pharmaceutical trade association, and several large US companies, and well as large companies based elsewhere, are using a third-party public relations strategy.  Wendell Potter's muckraking book on the US commercial health care insurance industry, Deadly Spin, revealed how similar strategies were used by US based health insurance companies to defeat the Clinton administration's attempt at health care reform, and other measures targeted to make the US commercial health care insurance system more equitable and ethical  (see post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/02/health-care-corporate-disinformation.html">here</a>).  Third party strategies are fundamentally deceptive.    The current alleged use of the third party strategies by pharmaceutical companies to support ongoing suppression and manipulation of clinical research is more than just deceptive.  It is corrupt. Patient advocacy groups are usually believed to represent patients' interests.  For such groups to support a public relations campaign that could allow ongoing harm of patients (by suppressing and manipulating evidence to prevent it from being used to forestall excess use of ineffective, dangerous drugs) is abuse of their entrusted power.  To do it for money, money used to support these groups, or help underwrite generous compensation for their executives, fits the definition of corruption used by Transparency International - abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Note that the Guardian provided this viewpoint, <blockquote class="tr_bq">Tim Reed, of Health Action International, a group that has previously exposed the pharmaceutical industry's financial links with patient groups, said: 'It's incredibly ironic that this is a transparency initiative and we've now got clear indications that the pharmaceutical industry is ready to use patient organisations to fight their corner. 'It underlines the fact that patient groups who are in the pay of the pharmaceutical industry will go into battle for them. There's a hidden agenda here. The patient groups will say they think it's a great idea to keep clinical trials data secret. Why would they do that? They would do that because they are fronts for the pharmaceutical industry. 'Patient groups get traction because they are assumed to represent the voice of the suffering. But industry uses them to say we're not going to get innovative medicines if the industry is deterred from investing by having to be transparent about their clinical trials,' he added.</blockquote> We have previously noted isolated examples of evidence that particular US based <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/patient%20advocacy%20groups">patient advocacy groups</a> were being supported by commercial firms presumably to aid their marketing.  We have also found examples of conflicts of interest affecting<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/medical%20societies"> medical societies</a>, and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/institutional%20conflicts%20of%20interest">many affecting</a> non-profit hospitals and academic medical institutions, and<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/conflicts%20of%20interest"> their staff and faculty</a>.  I begin to wonder if most health care non-profit organizations in the US, and now it appears maybe in UK and in Europe, have been paid off to support marketing and/or public relations interests of health care corporations. This latest example suggests that health care worldwide has become deeply corrupt, even more corrupt than <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Transparency%20International">Transparency International</a>'s <a href="http://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/pub/global_corruption_report_2006_corruption_and_health">Global Report on health care corruption in 2006</a>, or the those responding to Transparency International's <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/07/43-believe-that-us-health-care-corrupt.html">global corruption survey in 2013</a>, could envision. I only hope that the pile up of new examples - each seemingly worse than the one before - of health care corruption, will be sufficient to overcome the anechoic effect, and create enough global outrage to give us a chance to clean up our corrupt health care before it destroys our health. ADDENDUM (25 July, 2013) - See also <a href="http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-astroturf-speaks-out-more-industry.html">comments</a> by Dr Howard Brody on the Hooked: Ethics, Medicine and Pharma blog.  ADDENDUM (29 July, 2013 - See the <a href="http://1boringoldman.com/index.php/2013/07/28/a-closing-argument/">comment</a> on the 1BoringOldMan blog.

Pharmaceutical Industry "'Mobilised' an Army of Patient Groups to Lobby Against" Improving Clinical Research Integrity

I had guessed that this sort of thing was going on all the time, but being kept very well hidden. Now we have some more evidence.An article in yesterdays Guardian showed how the pharmaceutical indust…

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22 Jul 2013

43% Believe that US Health Care is Corrupt, 64% that Government is Run by a Few Big Interests, Media Shrug

We have noted  (most recently <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/05/running-away-from-problem-of-health.html">here</a>),  that health care corruption, particularly its global nature and its presence in developed countries like the US, is a taboo topic and thus remains <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/anechoic%20effect">anechoic</a>.   Transparency International just released its yearly massive <a href="http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013">survey on corruption worldwide</a>.  The results are not pretty for health care and related sectors world wide and in the US.  As expected, these results appear to be causing few echoes.  Global Results Some useful summary statements found in the <a href="http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/report">written version of the report</a>: <blockquote class="tr_bq">Governments are not thought to be doing enough to hold the corrupt to account.  The majority of people around the world believe that their government is ineffective at fighting corruption and corruption in their country is getting worse. The democratic pillars of societies are viewed as the most corrupt.  Around the world, political parties, the driving force of democracies, are perceived to be the most corrupt institution. Personal connections are seen as corrupting the public administration.  People surveyed regard corruption in their country as more than just paying bribes: almost two out of three people believe that personal contacts and relationships help to get things done in the public sector in their country. Powerful groups rather than the public good are judged to be driving government action.  More than one in two people (54 per cent) think their government is largely, or entirely run by groups acting in their own interests rather than for the benefit of the citizens. </blockquote> The survey included questions about corruption in the health care sector.  Globally, respondents perceived it was a major problem.  On average, 17% said they or their family members had to pay bribes in connection with medical and health care.  The average perception of corruption in medicine and health care across all countries was 3.2, where 1 = not at all corrupt, and 5 = extremely corrupt.  (Scores for the media were 3.1, business sector, 3.3, education system, 3.1, public officials, 3.6, political parties, 3.8, and NGOs, 2.7) US Results While the US did not have the worst results, our numbers were not very good (see US specific results <a href="http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/country/?country=united_states">here</a>). More than one-third (43%) of respondents thought that US health care is corrupt.  Large numbers of people also thought that related sectors were corrupt (53% thought business in general was corrupt, 34% education, 58% the media, 55% public officials, 61% the legislature, 78% political parties.) For comparison, the proportions of people who thought the health care sector is corrupt were 24% in Canada, 28% in France, 48% in Germany, 47% in Japan, and 19% in the United Kingdom Also, more than half (60%) of respondents said corruption in the US has increased over the last 2 years, almost two-thirds (64%) thought that the US government is run by a few big interests.  Thus, this survey confirmed that health care corruption is a global problem, and that a large proportion of people in the US believe it is a major problem here.  The Media Shrug This would seem to be major news.  However, so far the Transparency International survey results have received little  media attention in the US.  Moreover, what attention they have received in the US makes corruption appear to be some other countries' problem.  . Most of the US media reports avoided mentioning any results that relate directly to the country.  In particular, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/business/global/crisis-struck-europeans-losing-faith-in-governments.html">New York Times</a>, the <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2013/07/09/survey-finds-one-fourth-of-people-paid-bribes-in-last-year/">Wall Street Journal</a>, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/09/corruption-seen-on-rise-global-study-finds/">Fox News</a>, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/09/news/corruption-bribes/">CNN</a>, <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/business/bribery-rise-globally-amid-distrust-government-6C10578435">NBC</a>, and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/09/us-corruption-transparency-media-idUSBRE96805320130709">Reuters</a> coverage said nothing about the US.  Businessweek provided reports from <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-07-09/police-politicians-seen-as-malaysia-s-most-corrupt-in-survey">Malaysia</a> and <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-07-09/putin-officials-judges-seen-topping-russia-corruption-in-survey">Russia</a> that focused on those countries' results.  A brief report in the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-global-corruption-survey-20130709,0,7195220.story">Los Angeles Times</a> only noted a single US statistic, about the bribery rate, one area in which the US had relatively favorable results.  Only a lonely <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/07/09/transparency-international-spells-it-out-politicians-are-the-most-corrupt/">Forbes blogger</a> alluded to the US results in slightly more detail,  (and then went on to summarize those from Brazil, Russia, India, and Mexico in detail). In contrast, media reports from some other countries, like <a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/all-political-parties-are-corrupt-believe-86---indians-transparency-international-survey/1139640/">India</a>, <a href="http://www.ghanabusinessnews.com/2013/07/09/transparency-international-proves-ghana-govts-fight-against-corruption-ineffective/">Ghana</a>, and <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/world-corruption-survey-most-israelis-believe-government-agencies-promote-foreign-interests.premium-1.534780">Israel</a>, noted their own countries' poor results. Summary So once again we see how <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/anechoic%20effect">anechoic</a> are the notions that health care corruption is a severe global problem, and that it affects all countries, including the most supposedly developed.  Of course, the unwillingness to discuss global health care corruption, health care corruption in the US, and the relationship of health care corruption in the US to corruption in other sectors may arise from the fear, as stated by one person interviewed in Charles Ferguson's documentary <a href="http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/">Inside Job</a>, that discussion could lead to investigation, and investigation could "find the culprits". On Health Care Renewal, we try to discuss global <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/health%20care%20corruption">health care corruption</a>,.  We were first inspired by the 2006 publication of Transparency International's <a href="http://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/pub/global_corruption_report_2006_corruption_and_health">Global Corruption Report </a>which focused on health care, and documented how health care corruption is global, severe, and not restricted to the poorest countries  (see post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/02/global-corruption-report-2006-focus-on.html">here</a>). This blog focuses on the US, and we  now have in our archives some amazing stories that document various forms of health care corruption in the US, including numerous allegations of misbehavior by large health care organizations ending in <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/legal%20settlements">legal settlements</a>, and examples of outright <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/fraud">fraud</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/bribery">bribery</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/kickbacks">kickbacks</a> and other <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/crime">crimes</a>. On the other hand, we have demonstrated again and again that bad  and corrupt behavior by large health care organizations is a taboo topic.  For example, we could find  very few significant efforts to discuss, teach about, or research ways to fight corruption, or to promote accountability, integrity, transparency, honesty and ethics by academic health care institutions. (See <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-you-gonna-call-how-should-young.html">this post </a>for how difficult it was to find academic institutions' initiatives to resist conflicts of interest.) One can count the conferences, meetings, symposia, and courses on such topics on one's fingers. When I last looked, I could count only a <a href="http://sph.bu.edu/index.php?option=com_sphdir&id=239&Itemid=617263&INDEX=771">single course </a>on fighting corruption at any US medical or public health school (at Boston University, by Prof Taryn Vian). Of course, if we really want to reform health care, in the little time we may have before our health care bubble bursts, we will need to take strong action against health care corruption.  Such action will really disturb the insiders within large health care organizations who have gotten rich from their organizations' misbehavior, and thus taking such action will require some courage. ADDENDUM (16 July, 2013) - See <a href="http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-corrupt-us-health-system-and.html">comments</a> by Dr Howard Brody on the Hooked: Ethics, Medicine and Pharma blog.

43% Believe that US Health Care is Corrupt, 64% that Government is Run by a Few Big Interests, Media Shrug

We have noted (most recently here), that health care corruption, particularly its global nature and its presence in developed countries like the US, is a taboo topic and thus remains anechoic. Tra…

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10 Jul 2013

Hospital Retaliation Against Outspoken Physician Reaches New Levels - La Cosa Nostra Levels, That Is

Physicians, take note: <blockquote class="tr_bq">The Advisory Board Company Feb. 14, 2013   <a href="http://www.advisory.com/Daily-Briefing/2013/02/15/Jury-Hospital-CEO-framed-physician-by-planting-gun" target="_blank">Hospital Framed Physician; Planted a Gun </a> A jury has ordered a California hospital chain to pay physician Michael Fitzgibbons $5.7 million after its former CEO allegedly framed him by planting a gun in his car. In 2006, Fitzgibbons—an infectious disease specialist and former chief of staff at Western Medical Center—was arrested in the hospital parking lot after police found a pair of black gloves and a handgun in his car. Police questioned Fitzgibbons and searched his car after an anonymous 9-1-1 call claimed that the doctor had brandished the gun in traffic. DNA evidence from the gloves and gun exonerated Fitzgibbons, and he was never charged. However, the arrest followed a series of disagreements between Fitzgibbons and the leadership of Integrated Healthcare Holdings Incorporated (IHHI), which owned the Santa Ana hospital. Fitzgibbons and his attorney—Ted Mathews—alleged that IHHI's then-CEO, Bruce Mogel, had framed Fitzgibbons in an effort to silence him. Specifically, Mathews said that the frame was part of Mogel's attempt to "humble" Fitzgibbons after the doctor won a legal victory over IHHI in June 2006. During the trial, former IHHI President Larry Anderson testified that Mogel had instructed him to create a $10,000 contract for a "scary guy" named Mikey Delgado immediately after Fitzgibbon's legal victory. The contract was for unnecessary work on the health system's website. In his testimony, Anderson said he realized after Fitzgibbons was arrested that the contract was actually for the frame. Mathews told the jury that the $10,000 was used to "[get] Dr. Fitz set up." IHHI's board learned of the $10,000 contract during Anderson's deposition in 2008. Instead of firing Mogel, the board awarded him an eight-month consultancy worth $43,750 per month, Mathews says. This showed that IHHI board "knew what Mogel did to Dr. Fitzgibbons," Mathews told the jury, adding, "They ratified it, and they gave him a golden handshake goodbye.</blockquote> The article notes Board acquiescence. Two questions come to mind: 1.  Have the involved people been permanently removed from positions of authority in healthcaree? 2.  Have the persons involved been charges criminally? <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilmYlDXF0wtZWXy1i_Qce5WGtXzfJhnM2jwPUoB_AD06s_waEqlZyWng7l078AfCON-jrqQwmzZ-npxbJ3w66ZsTv53A1dbmrREys3idjEO9K6iBwgPffmubMHGPIwfO81GDQVOGmlFo3d/s1600/goldfinger-54.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilmYlDXF0wtZWXy1i_Qce5WGtXzfJhnM2jwPUoB_AD06s_waEqlZyWng7l078AfCON-jrqQwmzZ-npxbJ3w66ZsTv53A1dbmrREys3idjEO9K6iBwgPffmubMHGPIwfO81GDQVOGmlFo3d/s320/goldfinger-54.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtkFmufS6k8" target="_blank">Shocking.  Positively shocking.</a></td></tr></tbody></table> -- SS

Hospital Retaliation Against Outspoken Physician Reaches New Levels - La Cosa Nostra Levels, That Is

Physicians, take note: The Advisory Board CompanyFeb. 14, 2013 Hospital Framed Physician; Planted a Gun A jury has ordered a California hospital chain to pay physician Michael Fitzgibbons $5.7 milli…

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28 Feb 2013

Why Did the Global Fund Fire its Inspector General?

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria continues to struggle with the issue of health care corruption, an issue we noted <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/02/after-publicity-about-losses-from.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/will-freeze-of-global-fund-finally-put.html">here</a> in 2011.  Now as a <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/fresh-start-for-global-disease-fund-1.11857">news story</a> in Nature put it, <blockquote class="tr_bq">It has been a rough couple of years for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the world’s largest funder of international health programmes. Since its creation in 2002, the organization, based in Geneva, Switzerland, has channelled US$24.7 billion to delivering disease-control measures such as drugs, diagnostics and bed nets, saving millions of lives. But the global financial crisis has hit the fund hard, and its troubles mounted in 2011 when allegations of corruption among its grant recipients tarnished its reputation and alarmed donors. Last week, the Global Fund tried to move on, announcing a new leader and unveiling major changes to its funding programme.</blockquote>The Nature news story suggested that the troubles of the Fund all seemed so unfair.  After all, <blockquote class="tr_bq">the fraud allegations, ... [were] largely rehashed audits already made public by the fund itself. A retrospective audit published in July this year suggests that the allegations may have been overblown. It found that, in a sample of grants worth $3.8 billion that were awarded from 2005 to 2012 in 27 countries, just 0.5% of grant funding was lost to outright fraud. Experts say that figure is not exceptional for funding programmes in poor nations that often struggle with corruption.</blockquote>Yet the Nature story suggested that the Fund's intrepid new later "could signal a fresh start, and has been broadly welcomed," leaving the impression that all things may turn out well. Firing the Inspector General However, the Nature story left out one nagging detail.  At the same time the Fund board announced the appointment of Dr Mark Dybul as its new director, it also announced that it had fired the Fund's Inspector General.  A <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2353944c-2f4f-11e2-b88b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2CnJ2A6D6">report</a> in the Financial Times only included, <blockquote class="tr_bq">It also dismissed John Parsons, its inspector general. Some directors believed Mr Parsons had been too outspoken in conducting public audits that sparked criticism of relatively small amounts of mismanagement and corruption.</blockquote>The impression left was that Mr Parson was mainly guilty of rocking the boat. The New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/health/change-rattles-leading-health-funding-agency.html">version</a>, which started by recounting the hiring of Dr Dybul, also made it sound that Mr Parsons was generating too much bad publicity, <blockquote class="tr_bq">The fund also dismissed its inspector general, John Parsons, on Thursday, citing unsatisfactory work. Mr. Parsons and Dr. Kazatchkine had privately clashed. Mr. Parsons’s teams aggressively pursued theft and fraud, and found it in Mali, Mauritania and elsewhere. But the total amount stolen — $10 million to $20 million — was relatively small, and aides to Dr. Kazatchkine said the fund cut off those countries and sought to retrieve the money. The aides claimed that Mr. Parsons, who reported only to the board, went to news outlets and left the impression that the fund was covering up rampant theft. The fuss scared off some donor countries....</blockquote>The AP <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jiecT6YSPVq9jPKNW53mkUB-ytXQ?docId=b32b417580964fb3be54830d45d810b8">version</a> also cited the Board's accusation that Mr Parson's performance was "unsatisfactory," but included, <blockquote class="tr_bq">The inspector general's office is supposed to function independently. It was created in 2005 at the urging of the fund's biggest donor, the United States, which has contributed $7.3 billion to date. The board held a contentious closed-door session with Parsons on Wednesday then deliberated into the night after he stormed out. The board chairman, Simon Bland, and the head of its audit committee, Graham Joscelyne, each said they were unconcerned whether U.S. lawmakers might perceive the firing as an infringement on the office. Joscelyne would not elaborate on what Parsons did wrong but cited several reviews of him that were not disclosed. In its latest 6-month progress report, Parsons' office said it had a growing caseload of 142 active investigations, up more than 70 percent from just two years ago.</blockquote> Summary and Comment We posted about the allegations of corruption at the Global Fund <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/will-freeze-of-global-fund-finally-put.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/02/after-publicity-about-losses-from.html">here</a> in 2011.  At that time the scope of the problem was  unclear.  Now, at least according to the latest news report, it still is not clear.  On one hand, maybe no more than 0.5% of the budget was compromised.  On the other hand, would that caseload of 142 active investigations reveal more?  Even less clear is the reason that Investigator General Parsons was fired.  The Board did not clarify what about his performance was unsatisfactory.  The AP report implies that doing too little was not the issue.  Most disturbing is lack of any mention of a possible replacement. As we <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/02/after-publicity-about-losses-from.html">mentioned previously</a>, the authoritative <a href="http://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/pub/global_corruption_report_2006_corruption_and_health">2006 Global Corruption Report</a> from Transparency International stated that corruption is a major global health problem.  Furthermore, Transparency International's IACC (International Anti-Corruption Conference) in Brasilia just wrapped up.  It's <a href="http://15iacc.org/about/declarations/the-brasilia-declaration/">final declaration</a> included, <blockquote class="tr_bq">We call on leaders everywhere to embrace not only transparency in public life but a culture of transparency leading to a participatory society in which leaders are accountable. We call on the anti-corruption movement to support and protect the activists, whistleblowers and journalists who speak out against corruption, often at great risk. It is up to all of us in government, business and society to embrace transparency so that it ensures full participation of all people, bringing us together to send a clear message: We are watching those who act with impunity and we will not let them get away with it.</blockquote> Yet, corruption as a global health problem is still mostly ignored. In particular, global health aid programs almost never include pro-active measures to address corruption. In this case, the Global Fund, the world's largest source of such aid, was initially pushed into defensively addressing corruption, but now seems not to be so transparent about the problem. In my humble opinion, unless more transparency soon becomes evident, donors may continue to find reasons not to support the fund. So the leaders of the Global Fund might want to consider becoming more transparent, and making some assurances that they are not out to get whistleblowers, including their own internal watchdogs.  At this point a more pro-active approach might be too much to ask for.

Why Did the Global Fund Fire its Inspector General?

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria continues to struggle with the issue of health care corruption, an issue we noted here and here in 2011. Now as a news story in Nature put it,…

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20 Nov 2012

Majority of the Public Wants Politicians Who Will Root Out Corporate Corruption

Here is a story that makes me unusually optimistic, at least about the wisdom of the people at large. Reuters <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/19/us-usa-campaign-corporatewrongdoing-poll-idINBRE88I11E20120919">reported </a>on a new poll,   <blockquote>With less than two months to go before the U.S. presidential election, a new survey found 61 percent of Americans say a candidate's commitment to rooting out corporate wrongdoing will be key in deciding who gets their vote. Along with keen interest in knowing each candidate's plans to fix the struggling economy, voters want government to do more to fight corporate misconduct - which they say helped cause the financial crisis. 'In these difficult economic times, Americans are mad as hell about corporate wrongdoing and are going to do something about it in the November elections and beyond,' said Jordan Thomas, a partner at law firm Labaton Sucharow, which commissioned the survey and which represents corporate whistleblowers. A telephone poll of 1,015 people conducted from August 16-19 found that 64 percent of Americans said corporate misconduct helped bring about the current economic crisis. And 81 percent of respondents said the government has not done enough to stop corporate wrongdoing.</blockquote> Furthermore, <blockquote>77 percent of respondents saying they believe politicians favor corporate interests over constituent interests. Some 63 percent of Americans believe government should make more money available to regulators and law enforcement to eliminate corporate wrongdoing.</blockquote> This is really amazing in its contrast to the usual received wisdom in all its cynicism. We on <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal</a> have been railing about misbehavior and outright criminal behavior by major health care organizations and their leaders for a long time.  In 2008, the global financial collapse shocked us into awareness that the problems in health care actually parallel perhaps worse problems in <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/finance">finance</a>.  Yet while numerous <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/legal%20settlements">legal settlements</a> documented the continuing epidemic of bad behavior in health care, the relatively small penalties they entailed, generally limited to corporate fines that could be viewed as costs of doing business, and to toothless <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/corporate%20integrity%20agreement">corporate integrity agreements</a> seemed to do little to deter future bad behavior.  Again, since 2008 there were parallels in the world of finance.   As Oscar winning producer of Inside Job Charles Ferguson complained, no one went to jail for financial misbehavior either. In health care, the <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/anechoic%20effect">anechoic effect</a> dampened public discussion of bad leadership, including <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/crime">criminally</a> bad leadership as a major cause of health care dysfunction.  While we have been calling for more serious efforts to deter bad behavior at least since 2008 (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/07/amerigroup-settles.html">here</a>), our position seemed very lonely.  It took until last week for arguably the most prestigious US medical journal to run an article suggesting that leaders of health care corporations that commit fraud ought to go to jail (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/09/twilight-of-anechoic-effect-new-england.html">here</a>). Yet it may be that the general public has been paying attention to this issue even if policy makers and political leaders have not.  The brief Rueters article did not make it clear whether these poll results only apply to wrongdoing by financial corporations and their leaders, or to all corporations and their leaders. Even if it were the former, the results were certainly striking, suggesting a majority of Americans now identify corporate corruption, and its influence on politics as a major, maybe the major problem for this country. That might lead to some interesting election outcomes, especially since very few US politicians seem to have taken any sort of stand against corporate corruption, at least to my knowledge. If there is so much public awareness of the problem of bad corporate leadership, corporate misdeeds, and corporate corruption of politics, I can only hope that it will translate into awareness of these problems as they affect health care. As I <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/09/biovail-settles-and-judge-explains-why.html">wrote</a> in 2009, not long after Pfizer's mere $2.3 billion settlement,...   "Until the people responsible for the bad behavior experience negative consequences from that behavior, they will continue to perform, direct, and condone bad behavior. We will not achieve real health care reform in the US until we effectively deter unethical, self-serving behavior by leaders of health care organizations."  We can start realistically anticipating real health care reform once we get some politicians in office who are committed to "rooting out corporate wrongdoing."

Majority of the Public Wants Politicians Who Will Root Out Corporate Corruption

Here is a story that makes me unusually optimistic, at least about the wisdom of the people at large. Reuters reported on a new poll, With less than two months to go before the U.S. presidential ele…

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19 Sep 2012

Pfizer's Pforeign Pfiasco

Quelle surprise.  Giant international pharmaceutical company Pfizer managed to go for nearly 10 months without announcing a major legal settlement.  However, this month, as <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-07/pfizer-agrees-to-settle-foreign-bribery-case-with-u-s-.html">reported</a> by Bloomberg, it was time for Pfizer to settle again.  The basics were: <blockquote>Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, agreed to pay $60.2 million to settle foreign bribery cases it brought to U.S. authorities involving alleged payments paid by employees and agents of subsidiaries. Pfizer entered into two agreements with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York-based drugmaker reached a deferred prosecution accord with the Department of Justice, according to filings today in federal court in Washington. </blockquote> Bribery This case is worth perusing because of how it documents what the US government called not merely deceptive, but corrupt practices used by Pfizer to sell drugs. The practices were widespread around the world: <blockquote>The settlements announced today include Pfizer operations in eight countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Italy, China, the Czech Republic and Serbia. The Wyeth settlement, over its nutrition business, was for China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. </blockquote> The practices involved, not to put too fine a point on it, bribing doctors. Furthermore, as part of the settlement Pfizer apparently admitted to some of the specific practices alleged by the government: <blockquote>In Bulgaria, local representatives spent $28,000 to invite government doctors on 'incentive trips' to Greece, as a reward for the physicians who were the biggest prescribers of Pfizer’s products, Pfizer admitted according to the Justice Department filing. They also paid $17,000 to send doctors to medical conferences, again in exchange for commitments to prescribe Pfizer drugs. In Croatia, the unit there had used a consulting agreement with a government doctor to help influence which drugs were allowed to be sold in the country, paying the physician in cash and travel expenses, Pfizer admitted. Pfizer also admitted to what was called the 'hospital program,' in Russia, where doctors were given a 5 percent kick- back on certain drugs prescribed. 'Pfizer Russia used the Hospital Program to make cash payments to individual government healthcare professionals to corruptly reward past purchases and prescriptions of Pfizer products, and to corruptly induce future purchases and prescriptions,' the Justice Department said in the filing. Pfizer’s Russian unit also used intermediary companies to pay off doctors and government officials, the company admitted. </blockquote> No Individual Penalties Despite the shamefulness of these practices, as is now distressingly usual (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/legal%20settlements">here</a>), no individual seems to be obligated to suffer any penalty or negative consequences as a result of this settlement. While the US government alleged criminal behavior, beyond the fines imposed on the company, further prosecution will be deferred: <blockquote>The Justice Department charged the Pfizer HCP Corp. unit with two criminal counts, conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and a violation of the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions. Prosecutors agreed to defer prosecution and drop the charges after two years if Pfizer continues to cooperate and take remedial steps. </blockquote> The article contained a curious statement seemingly asserting that the payments were somehow made independent of any actions by individuals at Pfizer: <blockquote>The SEC said the payoffs were made 'without the knowledge or approval of officers or employees of Pfizer, but the inaccurate books and records of Pfizer subsidiaries were consolidated in the financial reports of Pfizer.' </blockquote> So were the payments made by machines acting autonomously? or by ghosts? Maybe this was just a typo. However, note that the de rigeur statement by Pfizer's internal counsel was phrased so as to imply the actions somehow occurred outside of the organization: <blockquote>'The actions which led to this resolution were disappointing, but the openness and speed with which Pfizer voluntarily disclosed and addressed them reflects our true culture and the real value we place on integrity and meeting commitments,' Amy Schulman, Pfizer’s general counsel, said in an e-mailed statement.</blockquote> Summary This latest settlement reaffirms the poor ethical culture now prevalent in major health care organizations throughout the world.  It also affirms how deeply unethical the culture has become at some of our largest and most prominent and influential health care organizations.  This settlement is only the latest evidence of ethical missteps by Pfizer's leadership. In the beginning of the 21st century, <a href="http://articles.philly.com/2009-09-03/business/25267571_1_pfizer-employee-pfizer-sales-representatives-zyvox">according to the Philadelphia Inquirer</a>, Pfizer made three major settlements, <blockquote>October 2002: Pfizer and subsidiaries Warner-Lambert and Parke-Davis agreed to pay $49 million to settle allegations that the company fraudulently avoided paying fully rebates owed to the state and federal governments under the national Medicaid Rebate program for the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor. May 2004: Pfizer agreed to pay $430 million to settle DOJ claims involving the off-label promotion of the epilepsy drug Neurontin by subsidiary Warner-Lambert. The promotions included flying doctors to lavish resorts and paying them hefty speakers' fees to tout the drug. The company said the activity took place years before it bought Warner-Lambert in 2000. April 2007: Pfizer agreed to pay $34.7 million in fines to settle Department of Justice allegations that it improperly promoted the human growth hormone product Genotropin. The drugmaker's Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. subsidiary pleaded guilty to offering a kickback to a pharmacy-benefits manager to sell more of the drug.</blockquote> Thereafter, Pfizer paid a $2.3 billion settlement in 2009 of civil and criminal allegations and a Pfizer subsidiary entered a guilty plea to charges it violated federal law regarding its marketing of Bextra (see post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/09/pfour-legal-settlements-for-pfizer-why.html">here</a>).  Pfizer was involved in two other major cases from then to early 2010, including one in which a jury found the company guilty of violating the RICO (racketeer-influenced corrupt organization) statute (see post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/03/settlement-and-conviction-round-up.html">here</a>).  The company was listed as one of the pharmaceutical "big four" companies in terms of defrauding the government (see post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/12/drug-companies-are-now-no-1-when-it.html">here</a>).  Pfizer's Pharmacia subsidiary settled allegations that it inflated drugs costs paid by New York in early 2011 (see post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/02/pharmacia-or-maybe-pfizer-settles-only.html">here</a>).   In March, 2011, a settlement was announced in a long-running class action case which involved allegations that another Pfizer subsidiary had exposed many people to asbestos (see <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-22/pfizer-reaches-asbestos-settlement-that-may-end-quigley-unit-s-bankruptcy.html">this story</a> in Bloomberg).  In October, 2011, Pfizer settled allegations that it illegally marketed bladder control drug Detrol (see this <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-pfizer-v-few-consequences-for-long.html">post</a>). Thus, it appears on 10 separate occasions between 2002 and 2012, Pfizer settled allegations of, pleaded guilty to, or was convicted for actions that represented seriously unethical behavior.  Note that these included a conviction that found the company to be a racketeer-influenced corrupt organization. Yet the company has not failed or been restructured, and none of its leaders has ever faced any negative consequences.  In fact, last year its CEO made over $18 million, up from over $6 million the year before (see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/04/there-they-go-again-pfizer-ceo.html">this post</a>).    So obviously it is not just that one company's culture has become seriously corrupt.  We seem to live in such a corrupt nation, and maybe such a corrupt global society that such corrupt cultures thrive in our major corporations and organizations.  Despite stories like this in health care, just like in finance despite the global financial collapse, as Charles Ferguson said at the Oscar awards last year, " not a single ... executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong." <iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mpz5DVwnbnk" width="560"></iframe> Unless we hold leaders of health care organizations accountable for bad behavior and corruption, expect bad behavior and corruption to get worse.  Until we have political leaders with the courage to stand up for honesty and the law, expect continued dishonesty and the law to continue to be trampled by the rich and powerful.

Pfizer's Pforeign Pfiasco

Quelle surprise. Giant international pharmaceutical company Pfizer managed to go for nearly 10 months without announcing a major legal settlement. However, this month, as reported by Bloomberg, it w…

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21 Aug 2012

Needed: A Webcast on Disruptive and Criminal Hospital Executives

I received this, unsolicited, via email: <blockquote class="tr_bq">Webcast:  Managing Disruptive Docs in a New Era of Hospital-Physician Relations If you haven't already purchased this live Webcast, don't miss out! Left unchecked, disruptive physicians do more than just create a negative work environment; they endanger patient care and can lead to million-dollar lawsuits and bad publicity.  Our top experts will show you early intervention techniques and a range of effective resources that can help you reduce behavioral problems, retain star physicians, create a healthier workplace and save millions in potential lawsuits. The agenda includes:     Defining and identifying causes of disruptive behavior     Economic consequences of disruptive behavior     Overcoming disruptive physician problems This program will be guided by your questions, so register now and ask away! </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Your instructors: Alan Rosenstein, MD, MBA Medical Director of Physician Wellness Services David Danielson, JD, CPA Senior Vice President, Clinical Risk Management, Sanford Health Scott Hurst Former Director of Physician Alignment and Recruitment, CHRISTUS Spohn Health System Managing Disruptive Docs in a New Era of Hospital-Physician Relations is designed to help CEOs, COOs, CMOs, group practice administrators, HR leaders, and physicians learn strategies and tactics to prevent, reduce, and limit the severity of disruptive physician incidents.</blockquote> "Disruptive physician" is a vague term subject to enormous abuse, leading to <a href="http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/article/sham_peer_review_resources_physicians/" target="_blank">sham peer review</a> among other totalitarian tactics.   It reminds me of the old Soviet Union's politics. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaZGkgvYub9OiuiXN2A_9Y57CTEJFCv8iKNfY4K7pA4HQW3dkVL-lHxHWLXPsFN4cplq0kC4fe42SsNySpr5W3e1WBLtbuuSyFgzbNL_OS9kiRFL5kidQezG61bXRNwk2iNoA23fTkqvcV/s1600/poster-06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaZGkgvYub9OiuiXN2A_9Y57CTEJFCv8iKNfY4K7pA4HQW3dkVL-lHxHWLXPsFN4cplq0kC4fe42SsNySpr5W3e1WBLtbuuSyFgzbNL_OS9kiRFL5kidQezG61bXRNwk2iNoA23fTkqvcV/s320/poster-06.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You have been deemed a Disruptive Physician, Comrade.  You will be given a fair trial, then shot</td></tr></tbody></table> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaZGkgvYub9OiuiXN2A_9Y57CTEJFCv8iKNfY4K7pA4HQW3dkVL-lHxHWLXPsFN4cplq0kC4fe42SsNySpr5W3e1WBLtbuuSyFgzbNL_OS9kiRFL5kidQezG61bXRNwk2iNoA23fTkqvcV/s1600/poster-06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> In particular, this label can be used to suppress clinician concerns about care quality in an era of cost cutting and care manipulation through electronic workflow control systems (e.g., EHR's CPOE, CDS etc.) The potential of being labelled as "disruptive" may be one reason why physician outcry against the very low quality of healthcare IT systems and dangers posed by them is relatively uncommon. Patients - you - ultimately suffer when your physicians fear being your outspoken advocates. As the many stories of healthcare executive malfeasance and profiteering at the expense of patients on this blog indicate, what is really needed for true healthcare reform are webcasts on: MANAGING DISRUPTIVE AND CRIMINAL HOSPITAL EXECUTIVES IN AN ERA OF RAMPANT CORPORATIZATION OF MEDICINE. -- SS Addendum:  here are additional resources on the “Disruptive Physician”: Abuse of the “Disruptive Physician” Clause,<a href="http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/huntoon.pdf" target="_blank"> http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/huntoon.pdf</a> The Insulting Physician “Code of Conduct”,<a href="http://www.jpands.org/vol13no1/huntoon.pdf" target="_blank"> http://www.jpands.org/vol13no1/huntoon.pdf</a> In the latter article, Lawrence Huntoon MD PhD, and expert on abuses of this label, notes: <blockquote class="tr_bq">... The typical physician code of conduct is initiated by a hospital administration. Its wording is curiously similar from one hospital to the next, suggesting that a template is being circulated. ... The physician code of conduct is intentionally insulting, demeaning, and degrading to physicians, and reduces physicians to being treated like juvenile delinquents at a reform school. It assumes that all physicians, like juvenile delinquents, need to be subjected to a long list of prohibited behaviors because, in the hospital administration’s view, physicians are predisposed to such things as theft, destruction of property, and physical and sexual assault. Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of “disruptive” or “abusive” hospital administrators, or any similar code of conduct applicable to a hospital administration.</blockquote> Dr. Huntoon then goes on to make a recommendation, a "hospital administration’s code of conduct": <blockquote class="tr_bq">... The term “disruptive hospital administrator” and/or “abusive hospital administrator” should be incorporated into the hospital administration’s code of conduct and should be defined as anyone in the hospital administration who, in the view of the medical staff (as determined by majority vote), interferes with the ability of physicians to provide safe and high-quality care to patients in the hospital.</blockquote> His detailed criteria for “disruptive hospital administrator” in the latter article are worth reading in their entirety. -- SS

Needed: A Webcast on Disruptive and Criminal Hospital Executives

I received this, unsolicited, via email:Webcast: Managing Disruptive Docs in a New Era of Hospital-Physician Relations If you haven't already purchased this live Webcast, don't miss out! Left uncheck…

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09 Aug 2012

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