DOW - Deadline Appears for Implant Removal

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Implant claim frustrations to ease

Cheryl Wade, Midland Daily News 02/26/2006

The head of a settlement facility that pays claims

against Dow Corning Corp. for its silicone gel

implants, says the process will have to slow for a

time but it's being improved.

The settlement facility, a separate entity from

Dow Corning, began paying claims after the company

emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2004. Women

sued Dow Corning, claiming the implants caused various

symptoms including joint swelling, pain, short-term

memory loss and connective tissue disorders. Dow

Corning has asserted the implants do not cause

disease, and a large body of scientific studies has

borne that out.

Last year, the committee representing people with

implants said the claims payment process was moving

too slowly, and Dow Corning agreed. That launched an

independent review of the process.

Claims administrator Austern said the

facility has paid around 57,000 claims, amounting to

$565.5 million. This month, the facility began

reprogramming its computer system, a job expected to

be finished by April 15. The computer work, and

testing it to make certain it does what it's supposed

to do, won't stop claims payments " but it will

absolutely slow them down, " Austern said.

" We're paying $32.5 million this month, " he said.

" I would be surprised if we pay $20 million in March,

and it may not be $15 million. "

Austern, who took over the helm of the settlement

facility last April, said he inherited a computer

system that " has no internal logic. " It had no

spellcheck. The programs also didn't find

inconsistencies in the information they processed. If

the information was contradictory or didn't make

sense, the computer wouldn't " tell you 'you can't go

on,' " he said.

" There were people there who knew that, " he said,

adding he doubted Dow Corning or the committee

representing claimants knew about it.

Austern said he spent $1.5 million to correct the

problems and, when they are fixed, the claims process

will work faster and he'll have better information for

internal management.

" Management reports we can do are less than

adequate for a claims processing facility, " he added.

Another reason for some of the slowdown is that

3,500 claims have liens on them. Those are lawyers'

assertions that legal fees must be paid out of the

claim before the woman gets her money.

" That's all in a separate database because that

makes it nightmarish for our people, " he said. Austern

said he's spoken at 17 claimant information sessions

with the average attendance around 200.

" I have heard some very, very, very angry people, "

he said. " The most frustrating thing is that we had a

nine-year delay (during bankruptcy) so we're requiring

people to get medical records that are 10 years old or

older. The law in most states is, you have to maintain

medical records for seven years. "

Vicki Lawrence of Florida is among those

frustrated awaiting her settlement check from Dow

Corning. Lawrence had two sets of Dow Corning

implants; the first was removed in the mid-1980s and

the second in 1992. She received $5,000 for implant

removal a little more than a year ago and she's

fighting for a $20,000 settlement for rupture. She

believes part of her problem is that her doctor wrote

" gel bleed " instead of " rupture. " Around 2004, when

she showed another doctor the implant with a hole in

it, the doctor wrote " rupture " in her medical

information. She received a letter saying her claim

was deficient because it involved a gel bleed. So she

put together " a book " of her research and sent it to

the settlement facility. Again, she was denied. Now,

she's been told her claim was sent to another

department for review.

" What they're trying to make you prove is that

this thing burst open inside your body and (the

contents) went through your body, " she said. " I don't

know where I stand with the second deficiency letter. "

Lawrence said she's in constant pain that travels

through her body and keeps her from enjoying life. So

she's also trying to complete a medical claim, but the

settlement facility has told her the process will take

two years or more.

" What the women do is, you hurry up and you wait, "

she said. " It makes you crazy. "

For a valid rupture claim, a person needs to prove

a tear or opening in the implant's envelope, but not

attributable to gel bleed, Austern said.

" I am very liberal on what I will take as a tear

or other opening, " he said. " I'll take an amended

pathology or operative report if it's no more than

five years later " than the initial incident.

Sometimes, it's an issue of the right word. He

will accept " lasceration " or " broken, " for example,

but not " worn out. "

Robyn Kirchner Wolf of North Carolina, too, is

frustrated. She received two implants made of Dow

Corning material in 1978 and said she became deathly

ill when the left implant ruptured. She had both

removed, received two saline implants and eventually

had them removed as well. She said she still suffers

from shortness of breath, joint pain and swelling and

short-term memory loss. She's awaiting a settlement

for disease.

Both women agree that, after years of being sick

and trying to prove the implants made them so, it's

not the money. " I'm doing it for peace of mind for

me, " Kirchner Wolf said. " It's for me, for knowing

that I survived it, and still do. "

Deadline nears for implant removal

With the deadline approaching for women with Dow

Corning Corp. implants to have them removed, an

activist for the women says there's a new problem:

doctors who want their money up front before they will

remove the implants.

The deadline for women to have their implants

removed is June 1 under Dow Corning's settlement plan.

Sybil Niden Goldrich, a longtime activist for people

who received implants, said she's talked to many women

whose doctors want the $5,000 payments up front to

remove the implants instead of agreeing to wait for

them to come from the Houston-based settlement

facility.

" We have thousands of women looking for plastic

surgeons, " she said. " How many women ... have $5,000

to throw at a plastic surgeon to have their implants

taken out?

" The doctors were very anxious to put breast

implants in all these women. "

Midland plastic surgeon Dr. , who's

done settlement-related paperwork for four or five of

his patients, said most doctors would remove implants

without money up front if they knew the woman were

having a real problem with them. But most plastic

surgeons want their money a couple of weeks before a

procedure because it's elective and many insurance

companies don't pay for it. Most insurances won't

cover removal of the implant unless doctors are

certain something has gone wrong, he said.

Dr. Roxanne Guy, president-elect of the American

Society of Plastic Surgeons, has been in practice 21

years and said much has changed since women began

suing companies in the 1990s. In earlier years, when

it was thought implants were related to systemmic

diseases -- those that affected the whole body --

insurance companies might cover the cost of removing

them if it was believed they had ruptured.

" Now, science says implants probably don't cause

the immune diseases (people) once thought, " she said.

" Insurance companies are much less prone to pay for

the (removal.) "

It's not just a matter of physicians getting paid,

but there's the cost of the operating room, a

pathologist who's supposed to examine the implant to

see if it's ruptured, and the anaesthesiologist and

other health care professionals, Guy said. Many of the

implants alleged to have made women sick weren't put

inside women's bodies by the surgeons now in practice,

she said. And though doctors generally want to help

patients, she said, they are wearying of the long

process.

" You start to become a little jaded in thinking

'Are patients ever going to get taken care of? Are we

ever going to get paid? "

©Midland Daily News 2006