Tag Archives: fraud

Texas Doctors Prescribe $47 Million Worth of Antipsychotic & Anti-Anixety Drugs, Primarily for Kids—One Child Psychiatrist Alone Wrote 27,000 Prescriptions For Xanax

With little oversight and apparent carte blanche, a relative handful of Texas physicians wrote $47 million worth of Medicaid prescriptions for powerful antipsychotic and anti-anxiety drugs over the past two years, according to a Star-Telegram analysis. The top five doctors alone wrote $18 million worth. Grassley asked Texas and other states for the top 10 prescribers who billed Medicaid for certain drugs. The Star-Telegram used prescriber numbers to identify the doctors, then sorted and tallied the drugs they were prescribing. Also reviewed was information on other mental-health drugs that have cost taxpayers about $1.3 billion during the past five years.

Most of the drugs have gone to children and adolescents, although prescribing the drugs to children, such as a toddler, is considered “off-label” — uses not approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Now the state’s Medicaid program is among others under scrutiny, after Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, began investigating the use of mental-health drugs this year.

Psychiatrist on Payroll of Glaxo Pleads Guilty to Research Fraud

A psychiatrist on the payroll of GlaxoSmithKline has been sentenced to 13 months in prison after pleading guilty to committing research fraud in trials of the company’s antidepressant Paxil on children. GlaxoSmithKline, manufacturer of Paxil, paid Palazzo $5,000 for every child she enrolled in the study. The case’s significance goes beyond simple research fraud, as Glaxo is now defending itself against charges that for 15 years it deliberately concealed evidence that Paxil increases the risk of suicide in children. Maria Carmen Palazzo is already serving a sentence of 87 months for defrauding Medicare and Medicaid.

South Carolina Doctors Under Fraud Investigation After Writing Thousands of Antipsychotic & Painkiller Prescriptions

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, requested data from each state this year listing which doctors write the most prescriptions for eight common drugs covered by Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor. The reports were intended to “ensure that taxpayer dollars are appropriately spent,” Grassley wrote in a letter to state officials. The report detailed the top prescribers of the following drugs:Abilify, Geodon, Oxycontin, Risperdal, Roxicodone, Seroquel, Xanax, Zyprexa. Among the doctors getting the most reimbursements were a Columbia psychiatrist who wrote about 3,900 prescriptions for the drugs in question in 2008 and 2009. The doctor billed about $1.3 million to Medicaid, according to a Post and Courier review of the data.

U.S. Justice Department Charges Former GlaxoSmithKline VP — A Top Lawyer—with Fraud over Illegal Marketing of Antidepressant Wellbutrin

In a rare move, the Justice Department on Tuesday announced that it had charged a former vice president and top lawyer for the British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline with making false statements and obstructing a federal investigation into illegal marketing of the antidepressant Wellbutrin for weight loss. The indictment grabbed the attention of pharmaceutical executives who have been bracing for a long-promised government crackdown on company officials — rather than the corporations themselves — in drug-fraud cases that have resulted in billions of dollars in fines and payments. “This is absolutely precedent-setting — this is really going to set people’s hair on fire,” said Douglas B. Farquhar, a Washington lawyer who recently presided at a panel on law enforcement during a drug industry conference where federal officials warned they were focusing on individuals. “This is indicative of the F.D.A. and Justice strategy to go after the very top-ranking managing officials at regulated companies.”

EDITORIAL: Why are doctors writing so many prescriptions?

Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to state Medicaid agencies earlier this year, asking them to list their top 10 prescribers of eight drugs commonly used in psychiatry. It may be that these doctors have good reasons for writing the most prescriptions for these drugs, such as OxyContin and Xanax, but it might also point out instances of overuse or even fraud. In Florida, for example, one physician wrote 96,685 prescriptions for mental health drugs over a 21-month period. That works out to more than 150 prescriptions a day, seven days a week, for nearly two years.