Medtronic Mail Delivery
Diabetic Investor finally received a copy of the original letter that was supposed to be sent out to patients, physicians and distributor regarding the recall of Paradigm insulin pumps. The envelope was post-marked July 17th and reached us here in Chicago three days latter. If as Medtronic claims the letters were sent out on April 24, 2007 (the date on the letter) which was a Tuesday the latest anyone should have received the letter would be Friday the 27th or Saturday the 28th.
What Diabetic Investor finds interesting here is the company claims to have sent 210,000 letters when there are over 330,000 Paradigm units in circulation. The company will not provide a detailed breakdown of how many letters went to patients, physicians, etc.
It should be noted that I am registered MiniMed customer as I was on the Paradigm 715 prior to switching to the OmniPod. When I asked the company why I did not receive a letter they said if a patient had not ordered pump supplies from the company in over a year they were not considered a regular pump user. According to previous statements made by the company over 70% of their customers are set up for automatic re-order of pump supplies. Does that mean only those patients who regularly order pump supplies from the company are worthy to receive this letter? What about the 30% of patients who do not order supplies from the company are their lives less worthy?
We do not know if any of the 29 deaths associated with Paradigm pump users are related to this issue. What we do know is the company isn’t talking. They will not tell Diabetic Investor if there is a fail safe system into the pump that would prevent over-infusion of insulin. We believe the reason is obvious, even if there was a fail safe built in, it doesn’t work. The design mantra at MiniMed used to be no one single component should cause the pump to fail. Of the many changes made after Medtronic acquired MiniMed the most devastating is the destruction of the do no harm rule.
David Kliff
Publisher
Diabetic Investor
www.diabeticinvestor.com
www.davesrunfordiabetes.blogspot.com
847-634-4777
800-783-3712
847-634-4646 fax
224-715-3761 mobile
