<\/p>\n
File: Baby transported in a transport incubator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
James Nielsen\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
A nurse-turned-sales representative says her former employer defrauded the government, endangered children and fired her when she raised questions about its products and sales tactics.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The company, Austin-based International Biomedical Ltd.<\/a>, produces a variety of neonatal medical devices including transport incubators it sells to hospitals globally.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Michelle Smith filed suit under seal last year, alleging\u00a0that in 18 months working for the\u00a0company, she saw company sales representatives misrepresent the abilities of its neonatal transport incubators to Texas hospitals and Defense Department medical institutions including Brooke Army Medical Center<\/a> in San Antonio and Fort\u00a0Cavazos, the base in Killeen now known as Fort Hood<\/a>.<\/p>\n The former transport neonatal intensive care nurse alleges her boss was telling hospitals the incubators they sold contained servo-control units that would automatically adjust temperature and humidity for fragile neonatal patients. She said they didn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n The units cost between $350,000 and $500,000, according to the suit.\u00a0<\/p>\n In its response, International Biomedical said Smith was confusing two product models and denies making any false claims. Attorneys for the company did not respond to requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In her complaint, Smith said that children were having bad outcomes because of the company\u2019s claims. In one instance, she said she was confronted at a conference by a nurse about the alleged failure of a transport incubator sold with the claimed functionality.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe nurse angrily informed Ms. Smith that she and other nurses had relied on the representation that Defendant\u2019s incubators were servo-controlled while treating infant patients, and that these patients were harmed based on this misplaced reliance,\u201d her suit says.\u00a0<\/p>\n She said Children\u2019s Health in Dallas bought six servo-controlled transport incubators and that the control function did not work as marketed. International Biomedical confirmed it sold the units to the\u00a0Dallas hospital\u00a0but denied they did not function correctly.<\/p>\n After that May 2023 conference, Smith said she consulted the company\u2019s lead engineer, who confirmed the units her boss described were not servo-controlled. She attempted to file complaints and raise the issue with managers and executives about her supervisor\u2019s \u201cunethical and illegal behavior,\u201d she said, but was shrugged off.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Her supervisor continued to misrepresent the incubators\u2019 functionality to make sales, she said, and pressed her to do so. When she attempted to correct him, she was reprimanded and threatened and her Christmas bonus was withheld. She said she was terminated three months later as retaliation.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company said in court documents it was true that Smith and another sales associate did not receive Christmas bonuses that year, but that she lost her job because her position was eliminated, not in retaliation for raising questions about the company\u2019s products and practices.<\/p>\n Her suit was filed as a qui tam action\u00a0\u2014 a lawsuit on behalf of the U.S. government under the False Claims Act. Such suits allow for relators, or\u00a0whistleblowers, to come forward with evidence of fraud against the government and sue for a hefty amount of the recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n Such cases often drive regulatory action and accountability. Last year, a record 1,297 qui tam cases were filed and judgments and settlements from\u00a0 them saw $5.3 billion recouped by the government<\/a>, according to the Justice Department.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The government chose not to intervene in Smith\u2019s case, though, a decision that unsealed the case earlier this year.<\/p>\n Not having the government as a partner was a major setback for Smith\u2019s fight with International Biomedical, but she is carrying on.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are huge. I mean, the government will litigate the case,\u201d said Sara\u00a0McLean, an attorney who spent 26 years enforcing the False Claims Act at the Justice Department.<\/p>\n Had the U.S. joined, Smith and her attorneys could have essentially sat back and waited for the government to litigate the claims, then taken up the retaliation cause. In addition to depriving Smith of government resources\u00a0\u2014 expert fraud litigators and resources\u00a0\u2014 McLean said the government\u2019s decision might leave an impression with a judge that the case lacks merit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cOfficially, it\u2019s not a comment on the merits but a lot of times the merits may be the reason why it was declined,\u201d McLean said.<\/p>\n Since the government\u2019s decision, Smith has amended her complaint to focus solely on\u00a0retaliation under the False Claims Act.<\/p>\n An analysis published<\/a> in the Northwestern University Law Review of 4,000 qui tam cases between 1986 and 2011 found that 94% of money recovered \u2014 about $24 billion \u2014 came from cases where the government intervened. The remaining 6% came from cases where it declined to intervene. The analysis notes that cases not taken up by the Justice Department\u00a0are far less likely to succeed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n According to Smith\u2019s suit, the military was going to expand the use of neonatal transport units globally in 2024, spearheaded by Brooke Army Medical Center doctors, which is the largest Army and Air Force joint-service Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. A recent federal contracting notice said\u00a0Brooke Army Medical Center planned to purchase<\/a> two additional neonatal transport systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"File: Baby transported in a transport incubator.\u00a0 James Nielsen\/Houston Chronicle A nurse-turned-sales representative says her former employer defrauded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,5454],"class_list":["post-371095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-saen_share"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}