A Medical Device Daily

QMed (Eatontown, New Jersey) reported that it has reached agreement with Alere Medical (Reno, Nevada) to settle the litigation and arbitration between the parties. The agreement, the result of a mediation process this week, provides that Alere will pay QMed a low seven-figure dollar amount to be received by Wednesday.

Jane Murray, QMed president, said, “We are pleased that the mediation process has concluded this matter.”

QMed provides evidence-based clinical information management systems around the country to its health plan customers. The system incorporates disease management services to patients and decision support to physicians.

In other court-related news: Tenet Healthcare (Dallas) issued the following statement regarding a decision by a federal judge in Miami this week to deny class-action certification in a case brought against Tenet in March 2005 by Boca Raton Community Hospital (Boca Raton, Florida).

“We are pleased that the court denied Boca Community’s request that its claims be made as a class action on behalf of virtually every other acute-care hospital in the United States. This ruling correctly limits the litigation strictly to Boca Community’s individual allegations, which we have previously said are unwarranted, and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”

The lawsuit alleged that Tenet’s pricing policies before 2003 had violated federal racketeering laws, thus harming Boca Community and other hospitals.

Tenet Healthcare, through its subsidiaries, owns and operates acute care hospitals and related health care services.