Johnson & Johnson accused of drug kickbacks

NEW YORK: Johnson & Johnson paid leading US pharmacy group Omnicare to promote its antipsychotic drug Risperdal for elderly patients, the US government alleges in a lawsuit.

According to the Justice Department, which announced the lawsuit on its website, Johnson & Johnson paid Omnicare, which is the largest US pharmacy for nursing homes, to push drugs including Risperdal.

The complaint filed in Boston on Friday targets Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems.

They are accused of paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to Omnicare.

"J&J understood that Omnicare's pharmacists reviewed nursing home patients' charts at least monthly and made recommendations to physicians on what drugs should be prescribed for those patients," the Department of Justice said in a statement.

"The government further alleges that J&J knew that physicians accepted the Omnicare pharmacists' recommendations more than 80 per cent of the time, and that J&J viewed such pharmacists as an 'extension of (J&J' s) sales force. Omnicare entered into a $98-million settlement in November with the government.