'This Is Not Medical Treatment. This Is Abuse'

The texts are not the sort you'd expect from someone watching a serious medical procedure. "Just used 12 [drug-coated balloons]!!" an employee of the world's largest medical device company, Medtronic, wrote to a colleague. "Does that mean I owe u $$," came the response. "That's what I'm thinking!!!" wrote the rep, with a crying-happy emoji. Later, she seemed gleeful as the balloon count keeps rising in the procedure to treat blockages in the patient's leg vessels. As ProPublica reports, the texts were recently released as part of a whistleblower lawsuit alleging improper ties between Medtronic and staffers at the Robert J. Dole Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas. They provide a "window into the way money and medicine mingle in the booming business of peripheral artery disease," writes Annie Waldman.

"It is unconscionable—there can be no valid medically acceptable basis to cram so many devices into a human being," wrote attorneys representing the whistleblower. "This is not medical treatment. This is abuse." The general guidance is to use as few medical devices as possible; at Dole, doctors routinely used far more than is standard. Medtronic denies wrongdoing but would not comment in detail because of the litigation. An internal investigation launched in 2017 by the hospital's new leader "found numerous cases where medical devices were used excessively," per the story. And a federal investigation, opened in response to the whistleblower's allegations of kickbacks, found that Medtronic plied staffers with hundreds of meals over several years, which may violate VA policy. The text chain cited above ends with the Medtronic rep celebrating the 17th balloon (the response was four happy emoji faces) and announcing the operation was over. "Running to get them lunch!" the rep writes. Read the full story. (More Longform stories.)