ATLANTA — A medical supply company has agreed to pay $17 million in Georgia to resolve allegations that they violated various laws by providing free samples and discounts to doctors to use their prescription form for prescribing catheters for their patients.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, the government alleges that soon after C.R. Bard, Inc. acquired Rochester Medical Corporation, Bard sales representatives began leveraging discounts on and free samples of in-office urological products to convince urology practice groups to make Bard’s “Link” prescription form, which listed the company’s various intermittent catheters, the standard prescription form for its group.
The patients would then take the Link prescription to a medical equipment supplier to buy the catheters.
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Two years later, Bard announced that it bought Liberator Medical Supply and Liberator Holdings to create its own medical equipment subsidiary so it could sell intermittent catheters directly to Medicare and Medicaid patients.
The government alleges that after buying those companies, Bard used the Link prescription form to encourage urology practices to prescribe their catheters through Liberator Medical instead of using other medical equipment suppliers.
“Patients should be able to trust the recommendations they receive from their physician are what’s best for their health, not what’s financially beneficial to another provider,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said. “We’re committed to putting a stop to any type of fraud or abuse within our healthcare system while protecting taxpayer dollars no matter the amount.”
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