Whistleblowers have exposed off-label marketing of medical devices, kickbacks to doctors and other improper sales and marketing tactics used by medical device companies that violate the False Claims Act by filing many successful qui tam (whistleblower) lawsuits against those entities.

Both the pharmaceutical and medical device industries follow some of the same sales and marketing practices that violate the False Claims Act and other federal and state statutes. As a result of qui tam lawsuits and federal and state investigations, drug companies have paid more than $30 billion to settle allegations of Medicare and Medicaid fraud.

A medical device company could be liable under the False Claims Act for Medicare and Medicaid fraud if it:

  • Has financial arrangements with doctors that essentially are kickbacks for using a company’s implant or other medical device. Some financial arrangements that are coming under federal scrutiny include royalty payments on new devices, paying the cost of educational conferences, sponsoring fellowships and providing unrestricted grants.
  • Markets the implant or other medical device for uses that haven’t been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
  • Sells implants or other medical devices that are defective or the company has reason to believe are defective. In a qui tam case brought by Phillips & Cohen, Hewlett Packard Co. and Agilent Technologies Inc. paid $7 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that alleged the companies knowingly sold defective monitoring equipment to federal agencies.

Sales representatives and their companies in segments of the medical device industry that are highly lucrative and competitive probably face the greatest pressure to win market share. There may be more pressure to offer kickbacks to doctors to win their business. This includes markets for implantable cardioverter defibrillators and pacemakers, stents, prosthetic heart valves and other cardiac implant devices; orthopedic implants (including artificial hips and artificial knees); spinal disks; cochlear implants; and robotic surgery machines.

Hospitals and other healthcare providers could be liable under the False Claims Act if they bill Medicare and Medicaid for medical devices that haven’t been approved by the FDA. The University of California at San Diego and the University of Washington at Seattle paid $4.7 million and $3.6 million respectively in 1999 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit brought by a sales representative who alleged the university hospitals had billed Medicare for cardiac devices the FDA hadn’t approved.

Phillips & Cohen’s Medical Device Kickback Cases

  • Medical device company C.R. Bard Inc. allegedly offered doctors many forms of kickbacks, including unrestricted “grant” money, rebates, advertising campaigns and free medical equipment. Bard paid $48.2 million to settle the case in 2013. Bard’s scheme allegedly involved providing customized kickbacks to doctors who purchased Bard’s brachytherapy seeds – implantable radioactive “seeds” used in the treatment of prostate cancer – at inflated prices and subsequently billed Medicare.
  • Medical equipment manufacturer ResMed Inc. allegedly provided hospitals and home health companies with free “resupply services,” a form of kickback that steered purchasers to buy ResMed’s equipment. The San Diego-based company, which manufactures and sells machines used to treat sleep apnea, paid $39.5 million to settle the allegations in 2019.

Kickbacks to doctors

Sales representatives, medical device companies and doctors should evaluate their financial relationships to determine whether doctors are being paid legitimate compensation for valuable services rendered in the development of the medical devices or whether the companies are paying doctors kickbacks to secure competitive advantage in the highly lucrative and competitive medical device field. Payments and other financial inducements made to physicians could be considered improper and a violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute if they could influence the doctors’ choice of implants and other medical devices. Free vacations, unrestricted grants and consulting agreements could be considered kickbacks as they might influence doctors’ choices of implants and other medical devices.

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