Imaging firm sues Sutter for $1 million in fees dispute
In yet another sign of discord between two of Sacramento’s health care heavyweights, Radiological Associates of Sacramento sued Sutter Health this week to collect $1 million in unpaid fees.
The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento Superior Court on Monday, accuses Sutter of refusing “to pay the fair and reasonable value for the goods and services provided” by RAS at two Sutter hospitals.
Sutter Health officials were apparently unaware of the lawsuit until Wednesday.
“Our attorneys have not yet received and reviewed the complaint, and so we are not able to offer further details at this time,” said Sutter spokeswoman Nancy Turner.
The dispute over fees is the latest flap between the two. Last fall, Sutter Health abruptly ended talks with RAS over extending a long-standing contract that placed RAS radiologists at Sutter hospitals.
RAS officials said the fees lawsuit is not directly related to any other rifts.
In an interview Wednesday, Fred Gaschen, the imaging company’s executive vice president, said the lawsuit arose from a dispute that began in April 2009 with the expiration of a six-year contract establishing fees for MRI and radiation oncology services at two Sutter hospitals in Roseville and Sacramento.
The fees are for technical services – including the use of two MRI machines owned by RAS but housed in Sutter facilities – and do not include fees for RAS radiologists who interpret, diagnose and work with other doctors to determine the course of treatment.
The two companies have attempted to negotiate a new fee structure, Gaschen said.
“We’ve gone back and forth, and round and round, but we haven’t been able to get anywhere,” Gaschen said. “We felt we had no choice but to go forth with a lawsuit.”
Since April, RAS has been billing Sutter for magnetic resonance imaging and radiation oncology services, based on what RAS considers “reasonable rates.”
According to Monday’s lawsuit, Sutter informed RAS in December that its new fee structure was unreasonable.
But RAS officials, who declined to talk specifically about their fees, say their new rates are less than what Sutter was charging on its own for similar services.
Gaschen noted that many charges in the old fee schedule had been unchanged in six years. “It was time for a rate change, and we couldn’t seem to agree on what that change should be,” he said. “As we all know, everything has gone up.”
Imaging firm sues Sutter for $1 million in fees dispute
In yet another sign of discord between two of Sacramento’s health care heavyweights, Radiological Associates of Sacramento sued Sutter Health this week to collect $1 million in unpaid fees.
The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento Superior Court on Monday, accuses Sutter of refusing “to pay the fair and reasonable value for the goods and services provided” by RAS at two Sutter hospitals.
Sutter Health officials were apparently unaware of the lawsuit until Wednesday.
“Our attorneys have not yet received and reviewed the complaint, and so we are not able to offer further details at this time,” said Sutter spokeswoman Nancy Turner.
The dispute over fees is the latest flap between the two. Last fall, Sutter Health abruptly ended talks with RAS over extending a long-standing contract that placed RAS radiologists at Sutter hospitals.
RAS officials said the fees lawsuit is not directly related to any other rifts.
In an interview Wednesday, Fred Gaschen, the imaging company’s executive vice president, said the lawsuit arose from a dispute that began in April 2009 with the expiration of a six-year contract establishing fees for MRI and radiation oncology services at two Sutter hospitals in Roseville and Sacramento.
The fees are for technical services – including the use of two MRI machines owned by RAS but housed in Sutter facilities – and do not include fees for RAS radiologists who interpret, diagnose and work with other doctors to determine the course of treatment.
The two companies have attempted to negotiate a new fee structure, Gaschen said.
“We’ve gone back and forth, and round and round, but we haven’t been able to get anywhere,” Gaschen said. “We felt we had no choice but to go forth with a lawsuit.”
Since April, RAS has been billing Sutter for magnetic resonance imaging and radiation oncology services, based on what RAS considers “reasonable rates.”
According to Monday’s lawsuit, Sutter informed RAS in December that its new fee structure was unreasonable.
But RAS officials, who declined to talk specifically about their fees, say their new rates are less than what Sutter was charging on its own for similar services.
Gaschen noted that many charges in the old fee schedule had been unchanged in six years. “It was time for a rate change, and we couldn’t seem to agree on what that change should be,” he said. “As we all know, everything has gone up.”
Many Rite Aid stores offer swine flu shots
Still need a dose of protection against the H1N1 flu virus? Rite Aid stores announced Wednesday that many of its stores in California are making shots available for purchase.
Health officials have urged people to be vaccinated against the so-called swine flu. County health departments also offer shots.
To see which Rite Aid stores are offering the service, at a cost of $15 per shot, visit www.riteaid.com/H1N1.
– Bobby Caina Calvan
Swine flu vaccine recall no cause for alarm, experts say
Like lead-painted Thomas the Tank Engine toys or ground beef contaminated with E. coli bacteria, the swine flu vaccine is now the subject of a mass recall.
Nearly 1 million H1N1 children’s shots that were part of Tuesday’s nationwide recall had diminished in potency but were still safe for use, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
On Wednesday, Sacramento health care providers scrambled to see if they had administered any of the recalled vaccine so they could notify parents – even though the parents won’t be asked to take any action in response.
Given the urgent calls from health officials in recent months to get children vaccinated, parents might be left wondering how so many shots could have been recalled.
Experts say anything being produced in the millions will have flukes. In the past decade, a handful of vaccines have been recalled because of problems with their effectiveness.
“It’s not unlike making a soufflé,” said Dr. Robert Schooley, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. “Most come out right, and sometimes they don’t.”
Made by French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur, the recalled H1N1 shots are single-dose, prefilled syringes for children ages 6 months to 35 months.
The shots met clinical standards when they were shipped in November, but subsequent testing showed four batches – 47,800 doses of which made their way to California – were about 12 percent below the threshold of recommended potency. The shots account for 9 percent of California’s total number of prefilled syringes for young children.
Children under age 10 are urged to get two doses of the vaccine spaced one month apart. Young children who received the recalled vaccine won’t need to get additional doses beyond those two, the CDC said.
Sanofi Pasteur would not elaborate on why the vaccine had lost some of its potency.
“At this time, we don’t have all the answers,” said spokesman Len Lavenda.
But experts said there could be multiple reasons for the degradation.
All flu shots are made by growing strains of the virus in eggs, then killing it, mixing dead virus particles with other ingredients and putting it all into bottles or syringes.
When injected, the dead virus particles stimulate the body’s immune response without sickening the patient, since the virus lacks all the pieces it needs to make a person sick. The next time the virus appears, the body “remembers” it and can destroy it.
Testing determines the concentration of dead virus needed to achieve an optimal immune system response, said Schooley, the UC San Diego professor.
“Sometimes the proteins unfold in a way that make them noneffective, or there is precipitation of them in clumps,” he said.
“These things happen with medications, and with vaccines you usually don’t hear about them. In this case everybody is worried about it because it’s a high-profile disease with a vaccine we wish we had more of.”
The problem with the recalled vaccine was that it degraded at a faster rate than expected, said Dr. Neal Halsey, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“All vaccines have a certain time before expiration,” he said. “These four lots changed a little bit faster.”
Halsey said the recall is actually evidence that the government and vaccine manufacturers are acting responsibly and testing regularly.
Other recent vaccine recalls:
• In February, Novartis recalled five lots of seasonal flu vaccine in prefilled syringes.
• In December 2007, Merck recalled 1 million Hib vaccines used to protect against meningitis, because of sterility concerns.
• Aventis Pasteur recalled portions of its rabies vaccine in 2003 and 2004.
Sacramento County cancels two flu clinics
H1N1 vaccination clinics scheduled for today and Saturday by the Sacramento County health department have been canceled due to weather and a lack of parking at the planned sites.
A forecast today for blustery rain prompted health officials to cancel the clinic at the Samuel Pannell Community Center in Meadowview.
“Our foremost concern is for the safety of the public,” said County health officer Glennah Trochet.
“(Today’s) forecast calls for soaking rain and gusty winds, which would make the outdoor wait for flu shots miserable and unsafe on slippery sidewalks.”
And since the county’s first clinics this week spawned big crowds – and accompanying parking problems – a clinic planned for Saturday at the Town and Country Lutheran Church in Arden Arcade was canceled because of too few parking spaces.
The clinic at the Pannell center likely will be rescheduled in the future when skies are clear, said the health department’s Kerry Shearer.
“We might well be back at the Pannell center, perhaps at a time when there are no other events scheduled and at a time when we are pretty confident the weather will be good,” Shearer said.
“We are trying to spread the clinics out all around the county so people can get to them easily.”
Updates to the H1N1 vaccination clinic schedule will be posted at www.SCPH.com.