St. Jude Medical Inc. agreed to pay $3.7 million to the U.S. government to settle allegations the heart-device maker paid kickbacks to hospital customers in two states. The Justice Department alleged that St. Jude made illegal payments to Parma Community General Hospital in Ohio and Norton Healthcare in Kentucky in order to secure heart-device business. The kickbacks allegedly included retroactive rebates that were paid based on the hospitals' prior purchases of St. Jude heart-device equipment as well as rebates St. Jude paid for purchases of heart-device equipment sold by competitors to induce purchases of similar St. Jude equipment in the future, the Wall Street Journal reports.
