Federal prosecutors in Boston said Friday that health care giant Johnson & Johnson paid tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks so nursing homes would put more patients on its blockbuster schizophrenia drug.
In a complaint filed Friday in Boston, prosecutors said J&J paid the kickbacks, in the form of special rebates and other payments, to Omnicare, the country's biggest dispenser of prescription drugs in nursing homes. Prosecutors allege Omnicare pharmacists then recommended that nursing home patients with signs of Alzheimer's disease be put on the powerful schizophrenia drug Risperdal.
The allegation comes in a complaint just filed by the U.S. Attorney in Boston in a whistle-blower case originally brought by a former Omnicare pharmacist in Chicago, Bernard Lisitza.
"Kickbacks in the nursing home pharmacy context are particularly nefarious because they can result in excessive prescribing of strong drugs to patients who have little or no control over the medical care they are receiving," U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said in a statement.
"Nursing home doctors should be able to rely on the integrity of the recommendations they receive from pharmacists, and those recommendations should not be a product of money that a drug company is paying to the pharmacy."
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