How Many Straws? - After $60 Million Settlement for Poor Manufacturing Quality, Hospira Warned by FDA, Then Assessed Punitive Damages for Firing Whistle-Blower

How many legal cases suggesting failures of leadership of large health care corporations will it take to break the back of health care? 

$60 Million Settlement of Class Action Alleging Cost Cutting Led to Poor Manufacturing of Drugs and Devices

Earlier this year, we posted about the $60 million settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by investors in Hospira Inc,  a drug and device manufacturer.  The plaintiffs had contended that "cost cutting aimed at boosting short-term profitability," and ostensibly "shareholder value" lead to "gutting quality control efforts," and ultimately to quality problems discovered by inspections by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

This case was brought not by law enforcement officials or regulators, but by stock holders who believed that their investments were degraded by management misbehavior. Nonetheless, as is usual in most settlements of civil cases involving big health care organizations, according to Law360, Hospira managers were able to assert,

Defendants deny that they have violated the federal securities laws or any laws and maintain that their conduct was at all times proper and in compliance with all applicable provisions of law.

Note also that company executives, including CEO Michael Ball, were named as defendants, but I could find no record that they had to pay anything themselves.

So this, like many other legal settlements we have discussed, only seemed to serve as a marker of probable, but not definite misbehavior by the leadership of a big health organization that led to problems with the manufacture of drugs or devices. This is concerning since the public and health care professionals trust drug and device manufacturers to proffer products of good quality.  Yet the resolution of the case left lingering uncertainty because the defendants could settle without admitting any wrongdoing.

FDA Warnings, and Punitive Damages for Firing a Whistleblower

Some more evidence that there really were quality problems in Hospira's manufacturing operation appeared in October, 2014, when the FDA warned the company about particles found in drugs manufactured in its Australian factory (per the Chicago Tribune).  

Furthermore, in November, 2014, a story appeared that not only corroborated the existence of important issues with manufacturing quality at Hospira, but suggested that the company had tried to cover up these problems.  As reported by Crain's Chicago Business,

A Lake County jury awarded almost $10 million to a former Hospira employee, finding that the company fired him because he raised concerns that it covered up quality and safety issues with a product. 

In particular, 

The former employee, Angel Estrada, was a vice president of quality systems and compliance for the Lake Forest-based pharmaceutical company from September 2010 to September 2011, when the company fired him, according to a lawsuit filed in Lake County Circuit Court.

Estrada raised concerns to supervisors that Hospira was not addressing issues in one of its medical pumps that a hospital in Spain reported to the company. The hospital reported that air bubbles had occurred in the device when used on children, which can cause fatalities, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that Estrada reached out to his superiors, including Hospira CEO Michael Ball, to address the reported issues and notify the FDA and European regulators of the pump's alleged defects.

The lawsuit alleges that on the same day Estrada sent Ball a report, two employees under Estrada were fired 'purportedly for altering a record during the course of an audit.' Hospira fired Estrada 'under the pretext of not properly investigating' one of the employee's conduct during the audit, the lawsuit says.

The real reason he was fired 'was to quash his reporting of the dangers associated' with the pump, the suit alleges.

The jury issued its verdict earlier this month. Of the almost $10 million Estrada was awarded, $7 million was punitive damages.

So in this case, a high ranking corporate executive tried to blow the whistle because of quality problems affecting the manufacture of a medical device.  These problems put patients at risk, and pediatric patients at that. His whistleblowing was vigorous, going as high as the company CEO.  Yet, the jury found that the company responded by firing the whistleblower.  

Still, not surprisingly,

Hospira said it will appeal and that it maintains that the allegations are 'fully without merit.'

That remains management's contention, but the jury found otherwise, and emphasized this finding with punitive damages.

Summary

These cases, added to all our other discussions of legal settlements, crime, and corruption in health care, suggests that bad behavior by leaders of large health care organizations is rampant.  Yet these cases also suggest how hard it is to understand the scope of the problem.  Each of the cases above involving Hospira seemed to proceed in a vacuum, uninformed by previous cases.  None got much media attention.  (For example, the latest jury findings only appeared in two media outlets, as far as I can tell, and both were in Chicago.)  There have been few efforts, beyond those of your humble servant, to try to link various civil, criminal, and regulatory cases involving large health care organizations together in any sense.  Continued lack of awareness of the scope of the problem of management misbehavior in health care mitigates against finding any effective solutions.

Furthermore, the cases above, like most others we have discussed, did not lead to any negative consequences to any individuals for authorizing, directing, or implementing the bad behavior, even though the behavior may have lead to their individual enrichment.  Managers in this era of "shareholder value" are often lavishly awarded for cost cutting that increases short term revenue.  Note that the top executives of Hospira have been lavishly rewarded.  According to the company's 2014 proxy statement, its five top executives each had total compensation exceeding $2,750,000 in 2013.  CEO Michael Ball, who was named as a defendant in the case settled earlier this year, and allegedly ignored the whistleblower's warnings in the most recent case, received $9,892,283.  It is quite possible that all these executives at least indirectly benefited financially from the cost cutting that lead to the quality problems implied by the cases above. Yet as long as there is no accountability for any person who was directly involved in authorizing, directing, or implementing the bad behavior, or who might have benefited from being furnished plausible deniablity about it, future bad behavior will not be deterred.

So how many more cases will it take before we start holding the leaders of large health care organizations accountable?  Will we do so before the back of our health care system is broken?

The Pervasiveness of Health Care Corruption as Shown by Another Roundup of Legal Settlements

Legal settlements are one way to document unethical and even corrupt behavior by large health care organizations, even if they may not deter bad behavior in the future.  It is time for another roundup of settlements by large pharmaceutical and device companies, presented in alphabetical order

Abbott Laboratories

This one goes back to late December, 2013.  As described in the Chattanoogan (from Tennessee):

Abbott Laboratories, a global healthcare company, has agreed to pay $5.475 million to settle alleged violations of the False Claims Act, and other federal laws and regulations in connection with the operation of its medical device business which manufactures, markets and supplies carotid, biliary, and peripheral vascular products.

The US Justice Department accused Abbott of kickbacks to physicians,

 As alleged in the settlement agreement, between 2005 and 2010, through its employees and a third party continuing medical education providers, Abbott offered physicians paid teaching and training assignments, consulting arrangements, speaking engagements, and/or sponsorship grants for physician conferences, for the purpose of inducing physicians to arrange for or recommend that the hospitals with which they were affiliated purchase or order Abbott’s carotid, biliary and peripheral vascular products.

Note in particular that the kickbacks were disguised as payments for consulting or speaking. 

As is usual in such cases, no individual seems to have paid any penalty or been subject to any punishment.  Because this was a legal settlement, the company did not admit wrongdoing.

Abbott's previous issues are discussed here, including a $1.6 billion settlement in 2012. 

Baxter International

This was reported in April, 2014 by Modern Healthcare,

 Baxter International agreed to pay $64 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged the Deerfield, Ill.-based company and some of its competitors colluded to raise prices of plasma-based therapies.

Unlike the other cases above and below, this seemed to be a purely financial misadventure, although one that clearly increased health care costs,

Hospitals and drug distributors, saying they bought the plasma products at inflated prices, sued in 2009 Baxter; Victoria, Australia-based CSL; and the Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association, an Annapolis, Md.-based trade group.

Once more, the company admitted no wrongdoing, and no individuals seemed to be subject to any negative consequences.  

Baxter International's previous misadventures are here, including the striking case of its marketing of contaminated and sometimes deadly heparin made from Chinese pigs. 

Endo Health Solutions

This one is from February, 2014, as reported by Bloomberg

Endo Health Solutions entered a deferred-prosecution agreement and will pay $193 million to settle whistle-blower claims that it marketed the shingles drug Lidoderm for unapproved purposes, the U.S. said.
Endo will pay $20.8 million in forfeitures and $171.9 million in civil false claims settlements with the states and the U.S. government, the Justice Department said today in a statement. 

This one was all about marketing for uses not approved by the US Food an Drug Administration,

Between 2002 and 2006, Endo sales managers instructed some representatives on how to expand 'sales conversations' with doctors beyond the treatment of shingles-related pain, the U.S. said. Under the deferred-prosecution agreement, Endo admitted that it intended Lidoderm to be used for uses not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Justice Department said. 

Note that this case involves false claims, that is, fraud, because it is illegal to bill government programs for unapproved uses.

Again, no individual suffered any consequences, and the company offered the usual kind of statement that admitted neither responsibility nor guilt,

'We are pleased to resolve this matter and are confident that we have robust programs in place to assist us in satisfying our legal and regulatory agreements,' Endo Chief Executive Officer Rajiv De Silva said in a statement.  

One wonders, as usual, why a company would pay so much merely to avoid the legal expenses of a trial, unless of course the lawyers suspected the trail would not go well?

Hospira

This one was about hiding quality problems due to cost-cutting from investors, as reported by Reuters in March, 2014.  

Hospira Inc has agreed to pay $60 million to resolve a class action lawsuit accusing the drug maker of misleading investors about quality control problems that undermined an initiative to improve the company's margins and operations.

The details included,

As Hospira was promising to address issues raised by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration following inspections, the plaintiffs said the company was 'making the problems worse by gutting quality control efforts through cost cutting aimed at boosting short-term profitability.'

The lawsuit said those cost-cutting moves stemmed from a March 2009 initiative called 'Project Fuel' intended to increase shareholder value by eliminating underperforming and duplicative units and reducing its global workforce.

Plaintiffs contended the cuts in the budget and workforce hurt Hospira's quality control efforts, particularly at Rocky Mount, the company's largest facility.

An FDA inspection in January 2010 of the Rocky Mount facility found a number of problems with the company's quality control and drug validation processes, the lawsuit said, and the agency issued a warning letter that April.

Note that this involved quality control problems presumably in drug or device production, possibly leading to safety risks for patients.  Yet it was investors who brought the lawsuit.

Note also that this seemed to be a clear case in which cost-cutting measures meant to improve short-term corporate revenue lead to problems that could have caused such risks.  

One interesting feature of this case was that company executives were named as defendant (presumably again because it was investors, not patients or law-enforcement officials who initiated the suit.)

The lawsuit ... also named executives including Chief Executive Officer Michael Ball as defendants,...

I cannot find any information about whether these executives were personally liable for any payments, however.   

Pfizer

This is yet another settlement involving the marketing of Neurontin, as reported by Bloomberg in April, 2014,

Pfizer Inc the world’s biggest drugmaker, agreed to pay $190 million to end a lawsuit claiming it violated federal antitrust laws by delaying generic versions of its Neurontin epilepsy drug. 

Pfizer agreed to settle the class-action litigation pending in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, according to a filing today. U.S. District Judge Faith Hochberg must approve the accord, which would cover purchasers of Neurontin from December 2002 to August 2008. 

Note that this settlement, like many others, is of matter from a long time ago.  When it comes to bad behavior by big health care corporations, any form of justice is not swift.

Note also that this is only the latest chapter in the long saga of Neurontin, for whose mis-marketing Pfizer has already shelled out a lot of money (see this post to start, and here for the collection).  Pfizer has an amazing record of bad behavior on view here.  In fact, it has had a conviction as a Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) on the basis of its previous marketing of Neurontin (look here).

This particular bad behavior involved included,

 improperly listing certain patents with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, engaging in illegal promotion and sales of Neurontin for unapproved uses, filing and maintaining sham litigations with respect to certain patents, and making misrepresentations to the patent courts,

Note that while much of this was legalistic, illegal marketing was in there too.

Once more, I found nothing about any negative consequences for individuals who authorized, directed, or implemented questionable actions.

Summary

So it is all drearily familiar.  Big health care organizations seem to repeatedly engage in deceptive marketing, providing kickbacks to health professionals, fraudulent billing, anti-competitive practices, etc, etc.  These practices increase health care costs, and may risk patients' health and safety.  Many of these practices are corrupt, at least according to the Transparency International definition of corruption, "abuse of entrusted power for private gain."  Drug and device companies, for example, are entrusted to provide safe and effective products.  Deceptive marketing, kickbacks to health professionals to encourage overuse, and cutting quality control to cut costs all seem to be examples of abuse of this entrusted power.  The private gain obviously goes to any managers and executives who score bigger bonuses due to the increases in revenue that result. 

Yet there are very few examples of any individuals who gained ever being subject to any negative consequences.  Given that lack, and the lack of any requirement for corporate leaders to admit responsibility, much less guilt, is it any surprise that these practices go on and on.  The failure of current limp legal efforts against such corruption is evident by how many corporations have become ethical repeat offenders.   (Note that in fact, as noted above, one of the pharmaceutical companies above actually was convicted of being a RICO, racketeering influenced corrupt organization, yet that conviction seemed to have no real negative consequences for the organization or any of the people involved.)

As I have said again and again, pervasive bad behavior by large health care organizations has got to be a major cause of our ongoing health care dysfunction.

So, to really deter bad behavior, those who authorized, directed or implemented bad behavior must be held accountable. As long as they are not, expect the bad behavior to continue.