Johnson and Johnson Accused of Drug Kickbacks

Johnson & Johnson paid kickbacks to the nation’s largest nursing home pharmacy to increase the number of elderly patients taking the antipsychotic Risperdal and several other medications, according to a complaint filed by the office of the United States attorney in Boston.

The payments violated the federal anti-kickback statute and led Omnicare, a pharmacy company specializing in dispensing drugs to nursing home residents, to submit false claims to Medicaid, the complaint charged.

The government’s civil complaint joins a whistle-blower suit against Johnson & Johnson brought by two former employees of Omnicare, which has headquarters in Covington, Ky.

Johnson & Johnson said it was reviewing the complaint and intended to address the government’s lawsuit in court. The complaint charges that Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, N.J., and two of its subsidiaries, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems, paid tens of millions of dollars to induce Omnicare to buy and recommend Risperdal for elderly patients as well as the drug maker’s prescription pain relievers Duragesic and Ultram, and the antibiotic Levaquin.

The complaint charges that Omnicare’s pharmacists engaged in intensive efforts to persuade physicians to prescribe the drugs from 1999 to 2004, a period in which the pharmacy’s annual purchase of Johnson & Johnson medications nearly tripled to more than $280 million, from about $100 million. During the same period, the pharmacy’s annual purchase of Risperdal rose to more than $100 million, according to the complaint filed in United States District Court in Massachusetts.

“Kickbacks in the nursing home pharmacy context are particularly nefarious,” Carmen M. Ortiz, the United States attorney for Massachusetts, said in a statement.

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Johnson and Johnson Accused of Drug Kickbacks