In August of 2010, DePuy and
its parent company, Johnson & Johnson, recalled the DePuy ASR XL Acetabular Cup System, acknowledging that within
five years of hip replacement with the system, 13% of patients required
revision surgery.
Patients who
were fitted with the defective system and require hip replacement revisions as
a result are entitled to file a claim and be reimbursed by DePuy for their
medical expenses. Traditionally, a company that has to recall a product would
handle these recall claims in-house. So, DePuy hip recall claims administration
would normally be handled by DePuy itself. But instead, DePuy has chosen to
retain an outside company, Broadspire, to handle these recall claims. Concerns
have been raised that the tactics being used by Broadspire may jeopardize
patients' right to sue the company in future and affect DePuy hip lawsuits.
Broadspire Takes Command of DePuy Hip Recall
Broadspire
usually works for employers and insurance companies and handles workers'
compensation and medical claims. Why is this problematic? Typically, when a
company handles recall claims in-house, it accepts the determination of the
patient's own doctor as to whether the patient requires a new procedure as a result
of the faulty product, and reimburses the claim. But Broadspire will NOT accept
the word of the patient's doctor; instead, it will retain its OWN physicians to
decide whether or not the patient needed a hip replacement revision. Since
Broadspire is being paid by DePuy, there is a conflict of interest: its doctors
may be motivated to deny the claims, despite the word of the patient's doctor,
in order to save the company money.
In addition,
DePuy is asking patients to sign a release allowing their doctors to share
information with the company. Some DePuy hip lawyers are concerned that the
purpose of this is to identify possible plaintiffs of a future DePuy Hip lawsuit and to
collect information that may be used to fight such a lawsuit.
DePuy argues
that using Broadspire to handle DePuy hip recall claims administration will
free DePuy to focus on developing new medical devices, instead of handling hip
recall claims. Still, the use of an outside company to handle DePuy hip recall
claims administration, particularly a company that normally works on behalf of
insurance companies, raises concerns that should be taken seriously.
