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Re: [OM] Olympus to pay $646M over kickbacks and bribes to doctors, hosp

Subject: Re: [OM] Olympus to pay $646M over kickbacks and bribes to doctors, hospitals - The Morning Call
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 09:08:29 -0500
Kickbacks of any kind (and even more so, those who take them) make me ill.

Chuck Norcutt


On 3/3/2016 3:41 AM, timhughes@xxxxxxxx wrote:
Chuck,           I go to a GI related Medical Conference every year where 
Olympus is a major Avertiser/sponsor of the conference.
They have a reputation for lavish wining and dining and playing hardball with 
their competitors.

Olympus directly infringed Given imaging swallowable pill cam patents and 
eventually they cross licensed, but the terms of final settlement were not 
disclosed.
My guess is Oly had to pay some sort of royalties.

Ironic that they should be sued over infections from inadequate cleaning of 
their scopes:
Scope vendors like Olympus make money selling washing equipment and fluids to 
disinfect endoscopes.
They are like a dishwasher using toxic wash fluids which also pumps 
disinfecting fluid through the endoscope's lumens.
A friend worked for a company that developed an elegant alternative that 
supposedly worked much better.
It  used microwaves and water and essentially steam cleaned the scopes lumens 
from inside,somewhat like in a microwave oven.This did not require the 
profitable wash fluids, and infrastructure from  Olympus,so Olympus bought the 
company and immediately canned the product.

I believe most of Olympuses profits are from the medical division, so we should 
hope they cleanup their act, so they can stay in business to sell cameras as a 
sideline!
The description in the linked article about kickbacks and lavish spending on 
doctors and decision makers is not unprecedented unfortunately. It is the scale 
that is amazing.
I used to work for a large medical company and pharma companies in particular, 
but device companies too, take physicians out to lavish dinners and events all 
the time.
These relatively minor perks to docs are absolutely routine business practises 
by medical companies and usually not considered out of line.
However, over the years there have been some big scandals with things like frequent 
prescriber programs : giving docs family holidays or other "prizes" if they hit 
target volumes of prescriptions. Other direct kickbacks have involved sales of devices 
like heart pacemakers, artificial joints, heart valves and so it goes.  Paying high 
consulting or lecture fees is another way to give kickbacks. All on our backs as medical 
consumers.
Tim



       From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  To: Olympus mail list <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  Sent: Wednesday, March 2, 2016 8:46 AM
  Subject: [OM] Olympus to pay $646M over kickbacks and bribes to doctors, 
hospitals - The Morning Call

I do hope the camera division is well insulated against the shenanigans
in the medical side of the business.

Chuck Norcutt

<http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-olympus-settles-justice-investigation-20160301-story.html>

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