Device Maker Olympus Hiked Prices For Scopes As Superbug Infections Spread

(By Chad Terhune and Melody Peters for Kaiser Health News)

LOS ANGELES — Soon after doctors at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center traced deadly infections to tainted medical scopes last year, they pressed the device maker to lend them replacements.

But Olympus Corp. refused. Instead, the Tokyo company offered to sell UCLA 35 new scopes for $1.2 million — a 28 percent increase in price from what it charged the university just months earlier, according to university emails obtained from a public-records request.

Olympus sales manager Vincent Hernandez told UCLA that the company’s previous discounts no longer applied. “Supplies are already low, where demand is high with all academic institutions expanding their inventories,” Hernandez wrote to the medical center. Read article here…..

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