In a change of course, the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced to The New York Times that within a few months, they plan to file civil and criminal charges against a number of orthopedic spine surgeons. They are targeting those surgeons from the spine settlements who have demanded profitable consulting agreements from device makers in exchange for using their products.
According to Lewis Morris, Chief Council of the OIG, “what we need to do is make examples of a couple of doctors so that their colleagues see that this isn’t worth it.”
Michael J. Sullivan, the United States Attorney for Massachusetts, said that prosecutors — after winning record fines from a record number of companies — realized that they needed to expand the scope of their targets.
“The strategy of looking at the companies alone was not completely successful in terms of our objective to deter healthcare fraud,” Mr. Sullivan said. “So it’s fair to say that the government is looking at evidence of criminal wrongdoing even by doctors.”
Besides jail time and fines, doctors convicted in the cases, could lose their licenses for a time and be excluded from the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, severely limiting their potential pool of patients.
This is a concerted effort to get the attention of physicians to frighten them from working with industry.
My belief is that if you are wrong in asking for consulting contracts and not providing valuable services for the company, then you should be in trouble.
Unfortunately these prosecutions will only serve to hinder valuable collaboration between physicians and industry in developing new drugs and devices.