You've heard of sports teams buying out their coaches' contracts. Well, now there's a device maker considering buying out its deals with surgeons. In a move designed to clear up legal troubles over its contracts with doctors, Zimmer is considering cutting off royalty contracts with many of them. To get out of those long-term deals, the company would give those docs up-front payments. Though Zimmer won't say how much that's likely to cost, analysts estimate the buyouts might run to $250 million.
And that would come on top of a $169.5 million fine levied by the U.S. government last year, plus the $54 million Zimmer expects to spend on new compliance measures, such as disclosing doc payments in an online database.
- read the story [1] in the Financial Times
Related Article:
Zimmer weeds out doc conflicts [2]
Links:
[1] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b38b6202-2373-11dd-b214-000077b07658.html
[2] http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/also-noted-bayer-sues-watson-over-yasmin-zimmer-weeds-out-doc-conflicts/2008-04-21