by Deb Cupples | It's no wonder that health care is of questionable quality and so expensive. The Justice Department announced that Quest Diagnostics and its subsidiary Nichols Institute Diagnostics -- from May 2000 through April 2006 -- knowingly and repeatedly marketed and sold diagnostic tests to medical labs that produced inaccurate results.
The test kit at issue is "Nichols Advantage Chemiluminescence Intact Parathyroid Hormone Immunoassay, a test that was used by laboratories throughout the country to measure parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels in patients."
One result is that patients were misdiagnosed, which led to another result: that health care providers (unknowingly) gave unnecessary medical treatments to some patients. Some of those patients received help from Medicaid -- meaning that the companies' inaccurate tests caused Medicaid to pay for unnecessary treatments.
Nichols pleaded guilty to a felony mis-branding charge, which is a violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The $302 million settlement will resolve criminal and civil charges.
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