Showing posts with label Pharmalot: Sales Reps As Soccer Balls: Warner Chilcott and Fraud in Prescription Drug Case--Will We See Something Similiar in A Compound Case. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pharmalot: Sales Reps As Soccer Balls: Warner Chilcott and Fraud in Prescription Drug Case--Will We See Something Similiar in A Compound Case. Show all posts

Monday, March 11, 2013

Pharmalot: Sales Reps As Soccer Balls: Warner Chilcott & Fraud in Prescription Drug Case--Will We See Something Similiar in A Compound Case

By Ed Silverman // March 11th, 2013 // 11:06 am

n one of the more expansive whistleblower lawsuits to be filed against a drugmaker, a pair of former Warner-Chilcott sales reps have detailed numerous means in which they allege fraud was committed in order to boost sales of various prescription drugs.
Many of the charges appear familiar – offering kickbacks in the form of meals, gifts, honey-baked hams, pheasant hunting and golf outings to physicians, for instance. But the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Boston and recently unsealed, also contains interesting details about alleged instructions from upper management as well as numerous alleged schemes.
These included having reps fill out prior authorization forms, which also meant the drugmaker was allegedly violating patient privacy laws; distributing all sorts of clinical studies that were downloaded from the Internet, as opposed to sanctioned studies that only discussed approved uses for medicines; offering inducements to members of committees that decided formulary placement for insurers; encouraging doctors to use coupons for Medicare beneficiaries, and deliberately hiring, young inexperienced reps to avoid pushback from experienced reps about tactics.
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