Documents filed this week in a federal whistleblower lawsuit against some of the nation's top spine surgeons hint at a lucrative financial relationship between Medtronic Inc. and several doctors at Twin Cities Spine Center, a Minneapolis practice that is one of the largest of its kind in the country.
The whistleblower suit alleges that the Fridley-based medical technology company offered consulting and royalty agreements to induce doctors to use its innovative bone-graft product, Infuse, in ways not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Seven doctors at Twin Cities Spine are named in the suit, which was filed by two former Medtronic employees in U.S. District Court in Boston.
In one document, a proposed 2002 consulting agreement, Medtronic said it would pay Twin Cities Spine doctors $4,000 a day for "services performed."
Total payments under the contract would not exceed $80,000 a year, and $240,000 through the three-year contract.
A second document appears to be a royalty agreement drafted along with six doctors at Twin Cities Spine -- Francis Denis, Timothy Garvey, Joseph Perra, Manuel Pinto, James Schwender and Ensor Transfeldt -- for future "inventions." (The doctors were among those named in the federal lawsuit.)
Medtronic agreed in that document to pay the doctors 5 percent of net sales of "royalty products" sold in the United States, and 2.5 percent of net sales of these products sold abroad.
John Lundquist, the Minneapolis attorney representing local doctors named in the Boston suit, said the consulting and royalty agreements filed in the case were drafts that never resulted in payments. But he said the doctors signed other agreements with Medtronic.
