MIDLAND NEWS: Implant frustrations continue ... and continue .... and

[Guest guest]

Note from Ilena: Bravo to those interviewed! Great work!!!

Wanted to mention that Vicki Lawrence, who gave a wonderful

interview and who has long been our 'resident poet' ... just

launched her new website:

http://www.everything-spiritual.com/test/

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Implant claim frustrations to ease

http://www.ourmidland.com/site/news.cfm?

newsid=16200878 & BRD=2289 & PAG=461 & dept_id=472542 & rfi=6

Cheryl Wade, Midland Daily News 02/26/2006

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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? "

www.BreastImplantAwareness.org