Back in August 2008, a Baltimore cardiologist named Mark Midei reached new heights - he placed 30 stents made by Abbott Laboratories in patients in just one day. This was cause for celebration at the drug and device maker. Execs wrote laudatory e-mails. A sales rep spent $2,159 on a pig roast party at his home. And Midei later became a well-compensated consultant for Abbott.

But there was a catch - he placed stents in hundreds of patients who did not need them, which helped explain why he was setting records in the Baltimore area for such procedures. Patient complaints prompted an internal investigation the St. Joseph Medical Center, which is located in Towson, Md., where Midei headed cardiac catheterization. These were followed by a series of articles in The Baltimore Sun (look here and here) and now a US Senate Finance Committee investigation (see the report here).

The committee found Midei may have unnecessarily inserted 585 stents between 2007 and 2009, and Medicare paid $3.8 million of the $6.6 million charged for the procedures. A 2007 Abbott document called “Project Victory” showed Midei was among its biggest stent docs in the Northeast. However, the committee concludes the “serious allegations lodged against Dr. Midei regarding the medically unnecessary implantation of cardiac stents did not appear to deter Abbott’s interest in assisting him.”

Not at all, in fact. After St. Joseph barred Midei from practicing there in May 2009, Abbott tapped himn as a consultant, according to e-mails released by the committee. In December 2009, an Abbott senior vp wrote that he was “very open” to having Midei do consulting “to see how it might go -either getting the word out in China/Japan, medical or safety work.”

The game plan was simply to “clearly avoid” the Baltimore area and instead, “please find key physicians or cath labs you’d like him to get in front of with our data,” according to an e-mail from Charles Simonton, medical director of Abbott’s vascular division. Another Abbott exec wanted to hire Midei “because he helped us so many times over the years,” another e-mail states.

Midei was sent to Japan and later paid $30,000 to help market the Xience stent, but the negative publicity from the Sun stories ended the sojourn prematurely, ticking off at least one Abbott exec who wrote in an e-mail that “somebody needs to take this (Sun) writer outside and kick his ass. Do I need to send in the Philly mob?,” according to page 169 of the committee report. [And we thought drug cartels only targeted journalists in Mexico].

Earlier this year, the Maryland State Board of Physicians charged Midei with unprofessional conduct. Meanwhile, Midei’s lawyer, Stephen Snyder, tells The Wall Street Journal Midei, who recently worked at the Prince Salman Heart Center in Saudi Arabia, is suing St. Joseph for sullying his reputation. The paper, which was one of the three media outlets provided the committee report in advance, notes St. Joseph agreed to pay a $22 million fine to settle charges of paying illegal kickbacks to Midei’s medical practice, MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates, but did not admit wrongdoing.

Pix thx to WBAL