Johnson & Johnson Hires Own Insurance Company
During the implementation of hip replacement recall by DePuy Orthopaedics and Johnson & Johnson, it
structured a compensation program for the affected patients’ “reasonable and customary” costs
associated with revision surgery. With this, Johnson &Johnson appointed Broadspire Services , a
subsidiary of insurance company, Crawford & Crawford.
On December 27, 2011, the New York Times reported on the selective policy that Johnson & Johnson,
DePuy, and Broadspire have been enforcing to process recall claims. The report claims that “things were
not going smoothly for everyone who has had accepted DePuy’s payment offer.”
There are around 93,000 recipients of the ASR XL Acetabular
System and the ASR Hip Resurfacing System worldwide.
Following the release of data showing defectiveness in one
out of eight patients to whom they were implanted, the two
device models were pulled back.
“It is a complete untruth that DePuy did not have reason to
withdraw the ASR before now; we have been telling them
since 2007, but they allowed it to be used on thousands of
people,” according to Dr. Stephen Graves, the director of
the National Joint Replacement Registry in Australia.
“We believe we made the appropriate decision to recall at the appropriate time given the available
information,” states DePuy spokeswoman, Mindy Tinsley.
Johnson & Johnson had pledged a total of $280 million in compensatory claims to the recalls, as of
March 31, 2011. Design problems with metal-on-metal hip implants, particularly the DePuy ASR hip
devices, may cause the metal components to rub against each other and shed microscopic metal
particles into the body. The presence of the metal parts may boost the amount of chromium and cobalt
in the blood. This condition may result in genetic damage (genotoxicity) and blood poisoning
(metallosis). Chromium and cobalt have also been linked to cancer, and might lead to the development
of tumors.
In May 2011, different engineers and medical experts created a registry tasked to track hip and knee
implants, after the issuance of DePuy hip replacement recall.
The goal was to keep tab on the more than 700,000 total hip and knee replacement surgeries that take
place in the U.S. each year and, over time, record which implants failed prematurely and which require
revision surgery to fix the original operation,” according to David Lewallen, professor of orthopedic
surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and AJRR chairman.
The hip replacement recall positively urged the manufacturer to take an action on the need of the public
for safe medical services and products. With DePuy lawsuit piling up worldwide, DePuy should duly
address the hip replacement problems encountered by its clients. To facilitate medical attention for
men and women who had bought the devices from it, DePuy should provide wide-ranging information
dissemination on the flawed hip replacement symptoms.