$385.5 million verdict against DaVita shocking

As the chief medical officer of DaVita Inc., I feel compelled to address a jury verdict that The Denver Post chose to write two stories about in recent weeks. Strikingly, this lawsuit centers not on the product itself, but on the way we communicated to caregivers about GranuFlo, a powdered product that has been used in tens of millions of dialysis treatments over 25 years, and continues to be used in tens of millions of treatments today.

The verdict is shocking when you consider the actual facts and science in this case. Our teammates did the right things, in the right way, and we would do it again the same way in the future. In fact, because of the outstanding work of our people and our physicians, we are the leader or among the top in clinical outcomes according to key benchmarks set by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This is what I know to be true: •GranuFlo continues to be safe and effective and is used today in clinics around the world to treat hundreds of thousands of patients;

•GranuFlo has been FDA approved for over 25 years with no changes in its composition;

•The plaintiffs argued that we should have changed how we used this product based on unsubstantiated speculation. Science soon proved that speculation to be incorrect. The underlying thesis of the plaintiffs’ argument that treatment must be altered every time there is an unsubstantiated concern puts the health of tens of thousands of patients at risk.

If you read The Denver Post’s stories, you would have thought it was talking about the actual arguments and evidence from our trial. Instead, the Post reported on testimony from other cases in which DaVita wasn’t even a party, statements made by the plaintiffs’ lawyers, and statements from plaintiffs’ hired witnesses — none of which was part of the evidence of this case. Some key facts known by the reporters and actually part of this case, but missing in the stories were:

•The plaintiffs’ own expert testified that he did not think that DaVita misled patients or doctors about information on GranuFlo;

•No one — none of the plaintiffs’ experts nor any treating physician — testified that the use of GranuFlo caused these patients’ deaths;

•No one testified that the treating doctors would have or should have done anything differently in prescribing dialysis with additional information concerning GranuFlo;

•No one testified, including plaintiffs’ experts, that there is anything wrong with GranuFlo.

Suits of this nature, in which the verdict does not meet the reality of the circumstances, drive up health care costs for everyone.

As I said at the outset, we did the right thing — treated our patients based on confirmed, peer-reviewed science. That’s why we are going to appeal this verdict. In the meantime, I know that the DaVita team around the world will continue to work hard every day to continue to do the right thing for our patients as we have done for more than a decade, which has made us the clinical leader for dialysis treatment.

Allen R. Nissenson, MD, is chief medical officer for DaVita.