If you've been watching TV news in Germany over the past 24 hours (doesn't matter which network)....you kinda notice this police raid of a pharmaceutical company called ZytoService in Hamburg. Roughly four-hundred police and at least six state prosecutors are involved in this massive raid of the business.
So what exactly happened?
The basic story goes to this.....this company built up a business operations plan where they were able to get 'lucrative' prescriptions done (no one can vouch for what lucrative really means)....which went through the cancer doctors (oncologists).
For two years....there were 'gifts' (some involved interest-free loans, some were for leased luxury cars, and some were in gift-cards). that went to doctors who favored their selection of drugs.
Total amount of fraud, so far discussed? Up to around 9-million Euro. With the info gained from the raid, I might go and suspect that the amount will go higher.
If you go back over the past twenty years.....a number of pharmaceutical companies have gone to the 'gift' method, to get sales on a higher scale via doctors. If you watch the news, about every six months, there's some company or agents who get rounded up, and go through the prosecutor 'drill'.
Will this 'gift' business put some German doctors in serious financial jeopardy? I'm guessing here that lawyers will be hired, and some serious fines will be handed out, and the authorities will avoid discrediting the doctors in some public arena.
The odds that another company will emerge in two years with the same business model? Probably better than 99-percent chance.
Good source for the bulk of this story? I'd suggest ARD, with a update from this morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment