Johnson&Johnson have paid tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks in aid of nursing homes putting more patients on its Schizophrenia medicine, U.S Prosecutors have said.
A complaint was filed last Friday stating that J&J paid rebates and other forms of kickbacks to Omnicare Inc. (the biggest dispenser of prescription drugs in nursing homes). Omnicare are alleged then recommended that nursing home patients which have signs of Alzheimer’s disease to be prescribed the powerful drug ‘Risperdal’, which has been found to cause death in elderly patients.
“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.”
