China watchdogs are going after rampant corruption in healthcare, among other enterprises

 Tread carefully, Dr. Binder!  Make sure the people you do business with in China aren't part of the "rampant graft" in healthcare there.  The anti-corruption watchdog in China has announced five more years of cracking-down on corruption.

China warns again of dark side of the mooncakes

SHANGHAI  
Sep 5, 2014 

(Reuters)

China's crackdown on corruption, a scourge Communist Party leaders fear threatens their hold on power, is likely to last at least another five years, an official said, warning also against the mid-autumn tradition of handing out mooncakes as gifts.

President Xi Jinping has promised to go after "tigers and flies" in rooting out rampant graft, a campaign that has brought down politicians and company executives in industries including oil, cars and healthcare.

UCLA is involved with healthcare company in China:

 ADICON, UCLA, and Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University form Triangle Telepathology services 
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7.11.2012
   
 UCLA Doctor Scott Binder and friends

In the morning of Apr. 23, ADICON’s COO Janny Yang, the head of UCLA pathology outreach service Scott Binder, and the chair of second affiliated hospital Jianan Wang, signed the telepathology service contract. Three parties will utilize their own resources and advantages to provide high-end diagnosis to the clients. The trilateral leaders attending the signing ceremony included ADICON’s COO Janny Yang, international cooperation manager Ti He; UCLA’s vice director of pathology department and supervisor of dermal pathology discipline Scott Binder, supervisor of gynecological pathology and cellular pathology discipline Professor Qian JianYu; the second affiliated hospital Zhejiang university medical school’s president Wang Jian’an, vice president You Xiangdong, admin office director Wang Kai, medical department vice director Xu Hangdong, medical lab director Chen Gongxiang, pathology department director Chen Derong, International affairs office vice director Yang Mingli.
Each party expressed their good wishes for the collaboration. Dr. Binder hopes to deliver better service capacities, as well as more chances of health education and research. Mr. Wang hopes that the participation of ADICON can reach more patients who need such services. The head of pathology, Derong Chen reiterates that the digital pathology is the trend of pathology services and communications. The involvement of three parties gives this service much more chances to enjoy the high-end resources not only in China, but also abroad. Janny mentioned that much more pathologists and patients can get access of the diagnosis through ADICON’s network and logistics. It will give the final result much bigger than we thought. ADICON expected to realize a “1+1+1>3” everyone-win situation through the collaboration.
UCLA is a leading medical center in US. From the ranking by USNews, multiple areas, such as GI, urology, ophthalmology are in top 5. Through this partnership, UCLA will deliver dermatology, gastrointestinal pathology, hematology, cytology services in China. Consisting of 47 clinical or medical departments, the second affiliated hospital Zhejiang university medical school is a renowned “AAA” hospital with a history of over 100 years. It will combine the existing strong capacities of Second affiliated hospital pathology team and ADICON pathology team to serve the patients.
This partnership also includes the technical training program and quality control program, in order to improve ADICON’s pathology team. ADICON will utilize this contract to solve the difficult-to-diagnosis cases, as well as to provide research chances. It will be a comprehensive platform of “diagnosis, education, research, and service”.

UCSD doctor concealed six-figure pay from medical device company and used that company's products on his patient did nothing wrong; UCSD says he did nothing wrong

Dr. William Taylor, UCSD, implanted screws from a company that paid him a six-figure income and in which he owned hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock options. UCSD paid for his legal defense, saying he did nothing wrong. UCSD paid $1.75 million settlement to avoid trial.

It took longer to uncover some critical details that Dr. William Taylor, the surgeon, had not told the retired special education teacher or the university: He owned stock options worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the company selling the spinal devices and had also collected six-figure annual fees from the same firm, the lawsuit said. Disclosure of such corporate payments is required by state law and university policy.

A lawyer for UCSD said Taylor did nothing wrong and denied that any patients were harmed. But the university last year paid Kitrosser $1.75 million to settle the case.

Dr. William Taylor got his medical degree from UCLA, whose medical school seems have particular problems with conflicts of interest.

UC system struggles with professors' outside earnings
Failing to report compensation from other sources leads to concerns about conflicts.
BY MELODY PETERSEN
OC Register
May 25, 2014

Doctors eventually solved the mystery of why Brenda Kitrosser suffered from unrelenting pain after her back surgery at a University of California hospital in San Diego.

A UCSD surgeon had implanted experimental screws and other hardware into her back, promising this would relieve her pain. Instead the devices pressed on her nerves endlessly, according to a lawsuit she filed later.

It took longer to uncover some critical details that Dr. William Taylor, the surgeon, had not told the retired special education teacher or the university: He owned stock options worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the company selling the spinal devices and had also collected six-figure annual fees from the same firm, the lawsuit said. Disclosure of such corporate payments is required by state law and university policy.

A lawyer for UCSD said Taylor did nothing wrong and denied that any patients were harmed. But the university last year paid Kitrosser $1.75 million to settle the case.

The controversy over Taylor’s undisclosed compensation is not an isolated case. The University of California has repeatedly failed to discipline medical professors who did not disclose payments from drugmakers and medical companies.

Last month, after UCLA paid $10 million to settle a lawsuit that centered on undisclosed corporate compensation, the non-profit group Consumer Watchdog called on state Attorney General Kamala Harris to investigate how widespread the unreported payments have become.

In a letter to Harris, the Santa Monica-based consumer group said that evidence presented in the case had shown that the university’s policies were “either inadequate or unenforced.”

“Patients in UC hospitals deserve the most reliable surgical devices and medication,” the group wrote, “and they shouldn’t be treated as subjects in expensive experiments.”

Officials at UCLA and UCI said they have recently increased efforts to make sure professors comply with the rules. UCLA doubled its compliance staff and hired a chief compliance officer. UCI’s chancellor directed all medical faculty to certify they were in compliance with reporting requirements and not engaging in unauthorized outside activities.

Those changes came after a series of undisclosed compensation cases involving professors from across the UC system. In each case, the professors who received the payments were involved in promoting or encouraging the use of a company’s product at the same time they were treating patients. In all the cases except one, it was people from outside the university who discovered the undisclosed payments.

• In a Los Angeles courtroom last month, Dr. Robert Pedowitz, the former chair of UCLA’s orthopedic surgery department, testified that administrators retaliated against him after he tried to get surgeons to report their corporate payments – including one doctor who said he had received $250,000 from a device maker for just 20 days of work. Just before closing arguments, UCLA agreed to pay Pedowitz $10 million to settle the case. The university said administrators did nothing wrong.


Dr. Thomas Ahlering
FILE PHOTO: MARK RIGHTMIRE, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

• At UC Irvine, Dr. Thomas Ahlering received more than $100,000 since 2002 from a company selling a surgical robot, but put most of that money in his nonprofit foundation without disclosing it, the Register reported last year. University officials say they have since required Ahlering to turn over $4,000 of that money to the school.

• An investigation by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley in 2009 found that UCLA spinal surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Wang had failed to report almost a half million dollars in compensation he had received from several companies. UCLA officials say Wang was required to turn over an undisclosed portion of that to the university.

Although some of the professors were required to return a portion of their undisclosed pay to the university, it’s not clear whether the universities disciplined them in any other way.

In Oakland, UC administrators said they have an obligation to encourage faculty to work with companies to develop new medicines and medical devices that can help the public. And they pointed to the policies that the university has long had in place to require faculty to disclose payments.

“We also recognize that more can be done to increase transparency and oversight,” said Steve Montiel, a spokesperson at UC’s Office of the President, “and we are reviewing our policies to determine how best to achieve these goals.”

* * *

Under state law, UC faculty who are leading research must disclose publicly any payments or gifts they receive from the companies or other parties involved in those studies. They must also disclose how much stock or stock options they hold in that company.

According to university policy, all faculty also must disclose on internal annual reports how much time they are spending on outside activities, as well as how much they were paid for that work.

YOU MUST FILE A TORT CLAIM AT UCLA MEDICAL CENTER RATHER THAN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

YOU MUST FILE A TORT CLAIM AT UCLA MEDICAL CENTER RATHER THAN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

The University of California works hard to conceal the tort claim process.

You can't sue if you don't file a tort claim within 6 months, so the Regents try to prevent those who have been harmed from filing a tort claim.

At first I was duped by the following document published by the Regents of the University of California:

[Maura Larkins' warning: the following is deceptive, produced by the Regents to avoid tort claims.]

"The Office of The General Counsel of The Regents (“OGC”)... THE REGENTS IS NOT SUBJECT TO CLAIM-FILING PROVISIONS OF THE TORT CLAIMS ACT California Government Code section 905.6 exempts The Regents of the University of California from claim-filing provisions of the Tort Claims Act. A claimant who wishes to file suit against The Regents may serve OGC as specified in section 1 above."

But if you go to "section 1 above", you see an address in San Francisco. It's the wrong address for filing a tort claim. Clearly, the Regents want you to come to them for health care, but if they harm you, they don't want to repair the damage.

I did more research and deciphered the truth with much difficulty. You have to present a tort claim to the specific campus medical center that is involved.