The United States alleges that the company paid kickbacks to Omnicare to induce the nursing home pharmacy company to purchase and recommend J&J drugs, including the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, for use in nursing homes. According to the complaint, J&J understood that Omnicare’s pharmacists reviewed nursing home patients’ charts at least monthly and made recommendations to physicians on what drugs should be prescribed for those patients. The government further alleges that J&J knew that physicians accepted the Omnicare pharmacists’ recommendations more than 80 percent of the time, and that J&J viewed such pharmacists as an “extension of [J&J’s] sales force.”
In order to induce Omnicare and its pharmacists to recommend J&J drugs, the company allegedly paid kickbacks to Omnicare in numerous ways including providing increasing levels of rebates based on increasing numbers of J&J prescriptions, purchasing “data” from Omnicare which was allegedly never provided and providing kickbacks in the form of “grants” and “educational funding,” though the actual purpose of the funding was to induce recommendations for J&J drugs, according to the DOJ.
The suit is a result of two consolidated whistleblower suits presently on file in Massachusetts.
Omnicare entered into a $98 million settlement agreement with the United States and numerous states in Nov. 2009 to resolve the company’s civil liability under the False Claims Act for accepting kickbacks in the scheme.
“We will pursue those who break the law to take advantage of the elderly and the poor,” Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, said in the release. “Kickbacks such as those alleged here distort the judgments of health care professionals and put profits ahead of sound medical treatment.”
Read the DOJ’s release on the alleged Johnson & Johnson kickback scheme.
