ATLANTA—C.R. Bard, Inc. and its affiliates—Liberator Medical Supply Inc., Liberator Holdings and Rochester Medical Corporation—have agreed to pay $17 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act and various state false claims act statutes by providing free samples and discounts to encourage urology practice groups to use Bard’s prescription form for prescribing intermittent catheters for their patients, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Georgia.
“The use of inducements to influence a physician’s medical decisions undermines the important physician-patient relationship and interferes with the goal of doing what is best for the patient,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Richard S. Moultrie Jr.
Moultrie and others, including Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and the FBI, said they would prioritize investigating and prosecuting fraud and kickbacks affecting federal health care programs.
“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,” Carr said.
The government alleges that between 2016 and February 2020, the Bard-related companies provided discounts, excessive free samples and cost savings for in-office supplies to urology practice groups to persuade those practice groups to use Bard’s own “Link” prescription form to prescribe intermittent catheters to their patients, in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute.
Bard began marketing intermittent catheters in 2013 after it acquired Rochester Medical, a developer and supplier of urological products. Soon after, the government alleges, 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 various Bard intermittent catheters, the standard catheter prescription form for its group. The patients would then take the Link prescription to a durable medical equipment (DME) supplier to purchase the catheters.
Two years later, Bard announced its acquisition of Liberator Medical and Liberator Holdings to create its own medical equipment subsidiary for the sale of intermittent catheters directly to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. The government alleges that after this acquisition, Bard used the Link prescription form to encourage urology practices to prescribe intermittent catheters through Liberator Medical rather than other DME suppliers.
The settlement resolves allegations filed by Dirk Etheridge, a former employee of 180 Medical, under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, which authorizes private parties to sue for false claims on behalf of the United States and share in the recovery. The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of Georgia; Etheridge will receive a share of the settlement.
The claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability.