Articles Tagged with pharmacy Medicare fraud law firm

Few things are more important that health.  We all worry about it, especially when we think about our senior years.  In addition to worrying about our physical and mental well-being, many of us are plagued by questions like “Will I be able to afford the health care that I need?”  Medicare and Medicaid exist to ease these concerns, but they are struggling.  As an experienced health care fraud law firm, we know that fraud is a big part of the problem.  Nursing home fraud and other forms of Medicare/Medicaid fraud deplete already limited resources and impede the quality of care as (so-called) professionals place profit over people’s health.  Scammers target lucrative arenas so it is no surprise that our firm is seeing repeated cases of Medicaid and Medicare fraud involving nursing home pharmacy providers.

Tentative Settlement in Case Alleging Pharmacy Accepted Kickbacks in Exchange for Promoting Drug

According to Modern Healthcare, Omnicare, the country’s largest provider of pharmacy services for long-term care facilities, reached a tentative agreement with the federal government to settle accusations it accepted millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks from Abbott Laboratories.  According to the government, Abbott paid kickbacks in exchange for Omnicare promoting the drug Depakote as treatment for behavioral disturbances in dementia patients.  The FDA has not approved Depakote for that purpose.  Nonetheless, Omnicare purportedly promoted the off-label use and had its pharmacists review patient charts and recommend the drug to doctors.  In return, Abbott allegedly paid kickbacks in a range of different disguises from “educational funding” and grants to tickets to sporting events and money used to fund corporate meetings.