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Ethicon Media Monitoring 2/25/2019
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Divert waiting times cash to pay for mesh surgeon, urge victims
Feb 25, 2019 | The Sunday Post
By Marion Scott
Mesh transplant victims are demanding some of the £27 million funding boost to cut waiting times should be used to bring a US mesh surgeon to Scotland. -
Common Benefit Fee 5% – Did You Pay It?
Feb 22, 2019 | Mesh Medical Device News Desk
By Jane Akre
Have you received a pelvic mesh settlement? Are you about to? Please understand there is a fee involved that you may not have to fully pay. -
UK government considers creating compulsory medical implant register
Feb 22, 2019 | Medical Device Network
By Charlotte Edwards
The UK government is considering creating a compulsory medical device register, which could register every implantable device in every patient so that healthcare professionals will be able to tell if a medical device is causing harm to a patient.
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Divert waiting times cash to pay for mesh surgeon, urge victims
Feb 25, 2019 | The Sunday Post
By Marion Scott
Mesh transplant victims are demanding some of the £27 million funding boost to cut waiting times should be used to bring a US mesh surgeon to Scotland.
They say women left crippled in pain by the controversial implants to treat bladder problems and pelvic organ prolapse need specialist surgeon Dionysios Veronikis to remove the devices as no other doctor has the experience to do so in Scotland.
MSP Neil Findlay said some of the new funding should be used to help mesh victims who have spent “years in despair and agony”.
He said: “Hundreds of women have been left injured and in agony for years after being told these devices were ‘gold standard’ treatment.
“Their lives have been destroyed and they feel abandoned by the NHS because so many doctors failed to accept these devices were causing devastating injuries.
“Dr Veronikis has developed a unique way of removing mesh and has acquired a world-renowned reputation for doing so.
“The very least our government should be doing now is to help the mesh-injured women get the treatment they believe will give them the best chance of regaining their lost lives and reducing the pain.”
The St Louis based mesh expert has offered to come to Scotland to help victims and to train surgeons, but the government have yet to make a final decision on his offer.
Elaine Holmes of Scottish Mesh Survivors said the offer was a “lifeline” for women who are now so desperate for help that some are considering using life savings to see Dr Veronikis in the US.
She said: “We have all been left with mesh inside us and it’s a ticking time bomb, causing constant pain and recurrent infections any one of which could turn into deadly sepsis.
“Women have died because of mesh, so it really is a desperate situation we’ve been left in.
“The Health Secretary has ‘found’ this extra money for waiting times, but we have already waited years for help. It’s time to repair the damage done to us.”
The new £27m funding is part of the £850m Waiting Times Improvement Plan that aims to improve waiting times by 2021.
The money will be allocated to health boards and at the same time the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Glasgow will be expected to take up the slack with additional workforce and new equipment along with evening and weekend clinics.
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said: “The immediate focus of the improvement plan is to reduce waits for patients whose treatment is urgent, who have a suspicion of cancer, and those who have waited longest for an appointment.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Full mesh removal, where this is the right outcome for patients, is already provided by specialist staff working in centres in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
“It is for health boards to decide if extra resources should be allocated to these services or if additional surgical staff should be recruited.”
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/divert-waiting-times-cash-to-pay-for-mesh-surgeon-urge-victims/
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Common Benefit Fee 5% – Did You Pay It?
Feb 22, 2019 | Mesh Medical Device News Desk
By Jane Akre
Have you received a pelvic mesh settlement? Are you about to? Please understand there is a fee involved that you may not have to fully pay.
Common Benefit Fee (CBF)
A lawyer recently told me:
“I wanted to make sure that you realized that common benefits assessments don’t come out of the plaintiffs’ recovery, they come out of the fee from the representing attorney.”
He said since the multidistrict (MDL) leadership is doing all of the work, they need to be reimbursed.
There were so many pelvic mesh cases, they were consolidated into multidistrict litigation, similar to a class action, to be prepared for trial. At one time there were more than 104,000 pelvic mesh cases filed against seven manufacturers.
When a woman receives a settlement from a mesh manufacturer the lawyer generally takes 40% for his effort while she receives the remaining 60% minus any medical liens, Medicaid, Medicare, loans etc.
Which side should pay that 5% is the question.
Why 5%
Like all MDLs or mass torts, there is a fee that the lawyers who did the initial discovery are reimbursed.
To prepare for pelvic mesh trials, they flew to Europe to interview and depose the doctors who did the initial research on pelvic mesh and they contracted experts and had to pay for their reports. They traveled a great bit to put together the research that would lay the groundwork for the narrative that would be told to jurors in the mesh trials. They paid out of their pocket.
The 5% comes out of every mesh settlement or recovery at trial so the attorneys who did the initial work can be reimbursed for the dollars they advanced. (Should that include a private jet to Paris with their wife? Probably not.)
I tell him that my experience is different, or at least the experience of the women I talk to. I’m hearing from MND readers, that the 5% common benefit fee came out of their 60% of the settlement dollars!
So Who Pays?
So the question remains, who pays the 5% – the plaintiff or her lawyer? The lawyer in question continues:
“CBF should be broken into 2 parts- Fee and Cost. Fee should ALWAYS come from the attorneys’ fee.
If an attorney is billing this to the client they should be sued. That is absolutely unethical. Cost is allowed to be taken from the client. These are the cost the MDL leadership has spent, such as flying to see the judge, paying for expert reports (these are very expensive, even before going to trial), paying for hosting documents and document review platforms. Most firms will bill cost to the client as is allowed. Our rule of thumb is that we will eat cost in the event billing cost to the client would result in us receiving more money than them (this is very rare, but can happen in cases with low/nuisance value where we have also spent a lot of records acquisition, etc).”
In other words, lawyers pay a fee to the common benefit fund to reimburse the initial researchers. I ask again, are you sure? Many women end up paying the 5% out of their portion of the settlement.
He continues:
“Absolutely, the CBFee (not cost – which is usually around 3% depending on the litigation) comes from the attorney’s 40%. That’s a huge reason the fee for mass torts is 40% and not 33%, because assessments come out too. Judge Goodwin shouldn’t have to specify, any licensed attorney should know that! It’s similar to if I need local counsel in X state to file the case for me, their fee comes out of my portion.
There honestly needs to be a MDL bar, just like there is a patent bar.”
So Who Paid the 5% in your case?
Bottom line – your attorney should pay at least 3% of that 5% to reimburse other attorneys. You may be on the hook for the costs your law firm has incurred such as plane trips, hotels, flying to see the judge.
The only exception to the above might be in your retainer agreement with your law firm. Does it specify that you, the plaintiff, is supposed to pay the entire 5%.
If this is not how yours turned out can you contact me? I’m doing some research in preparation for a story. Thank you in advance. Names need not be used for any eventual story but let’s talk!
https://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/common-benefit-fee-5-did-you-pay-it/
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UK government considers creating compulsory medical implant register
Feb 22, 2019 | Medical Device Network
By Charlotte Edwards
The UK government is considering creating a compulsory medical device register, which could register every implantable device in every patient so that healthcare professionals will be able to tell if a medical device is causing harm to a patient.
Health minister Jackie Doyle-Price revealed the plans during a short parliamentary debate last week when she was asked to respond to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Implant Files investigation by introducing a compulsory medical device register.
She said: “This is a matter already under consideration by the Department [of Health and Social Care], and it’s linked to our wider digitisation of agenda for the NHS. We have the technology, so we should use it in the interests of patient safety.”
The MPs were speaking during a medical device regulation debate called by Labour Party MP Owen Smith, who is a leading campaigner for women whose health has been negatively impacted by vaginal mesh implants.
At the start of the debate, Smith said: “My principal point this evening is that the regulatory system that we have for medical devices in our country and across Europe, and arguably across the wider world, is simply not fit for purpose and must be properly reformed.”
Last year, the ICIJ, in coordination with the British Medical Journal and various media outlets, carried out an investigation that found that unsafe medical devices have been implanted in patients and have already caused great harm to many.
The probe found that pacemakers, artificial knees, hips and rods to support the spinal cord are among the faulty devices, which have been implanted in patients. It also found that some of these unsafe devices had not even completed patient trials before their commercial launch.
The Royal College of Surgeons has also called for a medical device register to be created with its president Professor Derek Alderson telling the BBC in November last year: “All implantable devices should be registered and tracked to monitor efficacy and patient safety in the long-term.”
German health ministers proposed a similar register at the start of this year as they were also promoted by the ICIJ investigation.
https://www.medicaldevice-network.com/news/uk-compulsory-medical-implant-register/
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