http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/April13/NovartisLawsuitPR.php?utm_source=Pathology+Blawg&utm_campaign=be40387363-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email
One more suit! You are here: Home / Medical News / Medicine and the Law / Healthcare Fraud / US joins whistleblower suit against Novartis alleging kickbacks, false claims US joins whistleblower suit against Novartis alleging kickbacks, false claims april 30, 2013 by a leave a comment Just a few days ago, I wrote about how the US government filed suit against Novartis for paying kickbacks to pharmacists to switch patients from competing immunosuppressant drugs to Novartis’ Myfortic. Well, the US government last week also joined in a whistleblower suit brought against Novartis by a former sales representative. Two federal lawsuits in one week…that is officially the corporate definition of a horrible, no good week. According to the DOJ, Novartis violated the Anti-Kickback Statute starting in January 2001 by paying physicians to speak about Lotrel, Valturna and Starlix at “events that were often little or nothing more than social occasions for the doctors.” From the DOJ: In many instances Novartis made payments to doctors for purported speaker programs that either did not occur at all or that had few or no attendees, and thousands of programs were held all over the country at which few or no slides were shown and the doctors who participated spent little or no time discussing the drug at issue. Many speaker programs were also held in circumstances in which it would have been virtually impossible for any presentation to be made, such as on fishing trips off the Florida coast. Other Novartis events were held at Hooters restaurants. The lawsuit alleges Novartis would treat physicians to “lavish” dinners, including a $672 per person dinner in DC (that physician also got a $1,000 honorarium) and a $1,042 per person dinner in Des Moines, Iowa. According to the DOJ, Novartis tracked its return on investment for these activities, and found the honoraria paid to physicians resulted in the largest increase in prescriptions for Novartis drugs. Between January 2002-November 2011, Novartis is alleged to have spent $65 million on these activities for the three drugs mentioned above. As a result of these alleged kickbacks: Novartis has caused the submission of numerous false claims for drugs to federal health care programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE and the Department of Veterans Affairs health care program, resulting in millions of dollars in reimbursements. Novartis’s unlawful conduct caused those false claims to be made to and paid by the federal health care programs. Commentary Perhaps the most interesting part of the DOJ’s press release is this quote from Preet Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (emphasis added): Healthcare fraud imposes tremendous costs and causes great harm to an already burdened healthcare system, and the government will not tolerate it. The widespread kickback fraud alleged in our two lawsuits against Novartis – which only a few years ago settled a False Claims Act case involving violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute based on illegal payments to doctors – makes us question whether Novartis is getting the message. The False Claims Act case to which Mr. Bharara refers is where Novartis paid $422 million to settle allegations it illegally paid “kickbacks to health care professionals through speaker programs, advisory boards, entertainment, travel and meals.” Novartis denied almost all of the allegations. At the time, Novartis also entered into a corporate integrity agreement where it could be removed from Medicare and Medicaid for a “material breach” of the integrity agreement. The government alleges Novartis continued to pay illegal kickbacks after it signed the integrity agreement. It will be interesting to see, if the allegations in these two lawsuits are found to be true, if Novartis will be found to have committed a “material breach” or not. I attended one drug company-sponsored lecture in med school. (Note—It was actually in my school’s lecture hall, not at a Hooter’s) I don’t remember what company it was or what drug it was pushing, but the physician lecturer got absolutely skewered. She was running quickly through slides showing the difference between the company’s drug vs. others and showed a slide that was…how do I say this…creatively designed to make an insignificant difference appear significant. This was accomplished (or should I say attempted) by altering the y-axis on the bar graphs. Instead of it being labeled 0-100% it started at 90% and went up to 100%, thereby making a 1 or 2 percentage point difference look huge to someone who was not paying close attention. Anyway, she said “As you can see here, the difference was significant” or something like that. The chairman of neurology stopped her and asked her to go back, which she did, and he pointed out the alteration in one of the graphs and then proceeded to ask her pointed questions about her data. She could not answer those questions very well, because it was the company’s data and she was just parroting it. The chairman then stood up and told all the med students in the room why, as a physician, we should not push drug companies’ products just for money. I have to hand it to the speaker, though. She finished the remaining 20 minutes or so of the talk, although I’m sure she felt absolutely humiliated. I am curious whether the government has any intention of going after any of the physicians who accepted the alleged kickbacks. After all, it takes two to tango. Novartis surely kept records of attendees at these “conferences” or else it would not have been able to track the return on its investment. Share this post: Email Twitter Facebook Related posts: US sues Novartis for False Claims Act violations, kickbacks Mayo Clinic settles pathology whistleblower suit for $1.26 million US government declines to intervene in Ameritox whistleblower suit Federal judge allows whistleblower suit against Bostwick Laboratories to proceed Pharmacist sentenced to 17 years for $57 million drug scam; physicians involved filed under: healthcare fraud, medicaid fraud, medical news, medicare fraud, medicine and the law tagged with: health care fraud Speak Your Mind Name Email HTML tags are not allowed. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email.
