Abbott’s Alere resolves U.S. diagnostic device probe for $33.2 million

BOSTON (Reuters) – Alere Inc has agreed to pay $33.2 million to resolve claims it knowingly sold unreliable diagnostic testing devices to hospitals prior to its acquisition by Abbott Laboratories last year, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday.

The Justice Department said that Massachusetts-based Alere, from 2006 to 2012, sold its Triage-branded devices to hospitals that government healthcare programs paid for, despite receiving customer complaints about the erroneous results they produced.