PharMerica to pay $9.25M in Dept. of Justice settlement

The Louisville, Kentucky-based PharMerica, the nation's second-largest nursing home pharmacy, agreed on October 7 to pay $9.25 million to settle allegations it took kickbacks in exchange for promoting a specific drug to nursing home patients. Judge Joseph Anderson Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina was confident enough in preliminary terms to dismiss the lawsuit without prejudice in mid-August, after the sides had reported a settlement.  This settlement comes on the heels of a $31 million dollar settlement earlier this year. That settlement, made in May, was a resolution to a lawsuit filed by the United States that alleged PharMerica violated the Controlled Substances Act by dispensing Schedule II controlled drugs without a valid prescription and violated the False Claims Act by submitting false claims to Medicare. According to that complaint, PharMerica’s actions enabled nursing home staff to order narcotics, and enable pharmacists to dispense them, without confirming that a physician had made a medical judgment as to whether the narcotics were necessary and should be administered to the resident. The government alleged that PharMerica's consultant pharmacists recommended nursing home physicians prescribe Depakote, an anti-epileptic medication made by Abbott Laboratories, in exchange for kickbacks from the drugmaker. The government alleged the kickbacks took the form of rebates, educational grants and other financial support.  Abb...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs