Faced with kickback allegations
Abbott has paid 160 million US dollars in compensation _span5 _span strong In order to resolve the accusation that its company provided free blood glucose meter and other rebates to patients with diabetes, and fraudulently obtained medical insurance reimbursement.
These allegations were made by former employees of the Ariva Medical Call Center, whose parent company Alere was acquired by Abbott.
According to the whistleblower, Ariwa provides free blood glucose meters, encourages patients to purchase more testing consumables, and regularly exempts patients from co-payment for medical insurance. The U.S. Department of Justice stated that this behavior has continued.
Arriva was once the largest direct mail supplier of medical insurance diabetes testing products in the United States. Medical device company Alere acquired Arriva, and later Abbott acquired Alere.
From the above incidents, it is not difficult to see that When overseas corporate subsidiaries are suspected of allegations of kickbacks, the parent company is responsible for them ,This is clearly stipulated in the "Foreign Corruption Act" promulgated by the United States. It may seem unreasonable, but in fact, it is through strengthening the responsibility of the parent company to force it to actively restrain its subsidiaries, and ultimately maintain a good competitive environment in the market.
Not only that, no matter whether it is the company's subsidiaries or employees involved in kickbacks and bribery cases, companies must be held accountable, and they often have to pay huge indemnities for this:
last year agreed to pay a $8.1 million fine to the U.S. Department of Justice to quell its case of paying a kickback to a neurosurgeon in , South Dakota.
In January last year, in order to settle the rebate allegations related to the company’s sleep disorder equipment, ResMed paid 37.5 million US dollars in compensation ... Compared with the "huge compensation" of foreign companies such as Medtronic, it is very ironic that few domestic companies have paid the price in cases such as domestic medical device procurement corruption.
Domestic bribery cases are endless
strong2 Why is the chief culprit?
Kickbacks and bribery cases in the medical industry in our country have been repeatedly banned, but in the end, the dean was down and the distributors and medical representatives were taken away.
At the beginning of this year, Wu Wenxia, the former director of the Special Inspection Department of Panzhihua Maternity and Child Health Hospital, received RMB 850,000 in cash from medical equipment sales personnel, involving several giant machinery companies, and these companies were involved. He pushed it after posting, and even said that he was "not responsible for managing sales."
In August of this year, a medical device salesman in Jinan paid bribes to Duan, the former dean of Zibo People’s Hospital. In the end, the medical equipment representative and the dean were arrested and sentenced by the supervisory authority. Stealth.
Different from foreign marketing models that directly face patients and medical institutions, the domestic agency system has become a protective umbrella for these companies to a certain extent. But we all know that "a series of commercial promotion actions in the process of medical device sales are almost impossible to complete without the support of the headquarters of foreign companies in technology, after-sales, and operation." Like pharmaceuticals, a "blacklist system" that goes to the manufacturing company is adopted, so the trick of "dumping the pot" has repeatedly worked.
In response to the frequent occurrence of medical rebates, relevant state departments have successively issued relevant regulations.
Medical equipment manufacturers are severely punished for dishonesty!
The era of rebate gate "tracing" is here
span1 span1 span 9 last year The National Medical Insurance Administration implemented a credit evaluation system for medical price recruitment and procurement , which can be said to be a "revolutionary" policy.bribery of medical system personnel, false invoices, once violated any of the regulations, in addition to being included in "serious dishonesty", according to the severity, the collection center will be reminded and warned, suspended or It is forbidden to connect to the Internet permanently, and those who are more serious will face "prison."
After that, the National Medical Insurance Administration and the Supreme People’s Court jointly signed the "Memorandum of Cooperation on the Exchange and Sharing of Information on Commercial Bribery Cases in the Medical Field". established a regular notification system for commercial bribery cases in the medical field. Supporting implementation of the enterprise credit information evaluation system established in the national centralized procurement .
The issuance of these two documents is undoubtedly a huge blow to those companies that have been relying on kickbacks, bribery and other improper behaviors to carry When centralized procurement and volume procurement are bound to be at a competitive disadvantage. At the moment when various units of the country are cracking down on commercial bribery, , whether it is a medical device company or a related sales representative, must abandon the idea of “relying on kickbacks to find a way out” and always adheres to legal and compliant industry standards .
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