Medical Corruption: $ 4.00 lacs to 7.00 lacs consulting fees - NY Times Report.

January 25, 2006

The New York Times:

Whistle-Blower Suit Says Device Maker Generously Rewards Doctors

By REED ABELSON

A prominent surgeon in Wisconsin was paid $400,000 a year by Medtronic for a

consulting contract requiring him to work just eight days. Another doctor in

Virginia received nearly $700,000 in consulting fees from Medtronic for the

first nine months of 2005.

These doctors work in a growing field, complex back surgery, and this makes

them particularly valuable to the spinal-implant division of Medtronic. In

recent years, the company has spent tens of millions of dollars on consulting

contracts and other types of payments to them and numerous other prominent

surgeons, according to papers filed as part of a whistle-blower lawsuit. The

suit contends that some of these payments were made to attract or retain the

doctors' business.

Medtronic, based in Minneapolis, is one of the country's largest medical

device makers, with $10 billion in annual sales.

The documents shed new light on a matter that has troubled the medical device

industry for years: the assertion that companies employ a variety of financial

ruses to pay doctors who use their devices, a practice that medical and legal

experts say is unethical and possibly illegal. But despite industry efforts to

clean up such practices, the documents and accusations made by former Medtronic

employees suggest that the problem persists and may have gotten worse.

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