The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a complaint in U.S. district court related to marketing of a pelvic muscle rehabilitation system by the Prometheus Group of Raleigh, N.C., stating that the company encouraged health care professionals to reuse rectal pressure sensors and anorectal manometry catheters on multiple patients.
Intersect ENT Inc., of Menlo Park, Calif., picked up Fiagon AG Medical Technologies less than two years ago in a bid to expand its footprint in the ear/nose/throat (ENT) business, but that acquisition is about to be undone. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Intersect will have to jettison Fiagon because of Dublin-based Medtronic plc’s acquisition of Intersect, thus unwinding a transaction that was valued at €60 million (US$62.4 million) in September 2020.
Most of the better-known targets of prosecution under the U.S. False Claims Act (FCA) are drug and device manufacturers, but the Department of Justice (DOJ) seems to have opened a new front in the war on Medicare fraud.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported Feb. 1 that it had recouped more than $5.6 billion in settlements in connection with False Claims Act litigation (FCA) in 2021, with $5 billion of that amount derived from action against the health care industry.
Clinical trial fraud has not been on the radar screen for drug and device makers in recent years, but there have been several episodes in which the operators of clinical trial sites had fabricated data for clinical trials. U.S. deputy assistant attorney general Arun Rao said recently that clinical trial fraud is now front and center for federal attorneys, raising the risk that any documentation errors for clinical trials will create a massive liability for the sponsor.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) reported a new set of policies dealing with federal prosecutions of corporate misconduct that includes a far-reaching policy on disclosure. Deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco announced Oct. 28 that companies will have to disclose all non-privileged information in connection with alleged misconduct rather than just information regarding those who were “substantially involved.”
The FDA has struggled to revise a guidance related to cybersecurity in medical devices, but developers now have more than just lagging FDA guidances to worry about where cybersecurity is concerned. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has unveiled a program designed to leverage the False Claims Act to pursue entities that come up short of regulatory expectations for cybersecurity, constituting a new vector for liability for makers of devices and medical software.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exerted a significant effect on enforcement in the U.S., but Ethan Davis of King & Spalding (K&S) said federal prosecutors have made use of several novel approaches to prosecution in the past year.
U.S. Attorney General (AG) Merrick Garland has rescinded two important policy documents, including the Brand memo, which limited the ability of federal prosecutors to use non-compliance with federal agency guidance as proof of violations of the law. The rescission of these memos increases the risk that drug and device companies will be prosecuted more vigorously due to deviation from FDA guidance documents, which at times conflict with other guidances and thus may create a series of nearly unavoidable compliance failures.
A change of presidential administrations often brings a significant change in regulatory policy, and the Granston memo did just that shortly after the Trump administration took office in 2017. However, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has dismissed fewer whistleblower (qui tam) lawsuits against the private sector recently, a trend that Jonathan Phillips of Gibson Dunn said was evident before the Biden administration took over.
