Pharmaceutical company CareFusion agrees to pay $40.1 million to settle whistleblower suit alleging physician kick-backs and off-label marketing.
January 13, 2014 – The U.S. Department of Justice announced in a press release that CareFusion Corp. has agreed to pay $41.1 million to settle claims arising from a False Claims Act whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2010. CareFusion manufacturers and markets pharmaceutical products, including ChloraPrep, a product approved by the Food and Drug Administration to prepare a patient’s skin prior to surgery or injection. The whistleblower complaint, filed by former employee Dr. Cynthia Kirk, alleged that CareFusion paid one physician approximately $11.6 million in kickbacks in exchange for recommending and promoting the purchase of ChloraPrep to other health care providers.
The settlement will also resolve claims that CareFusion marketed ChloraPrep for “uses that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, some of which were not medically accepted indications, and made unsubstantiated representations about the appropriate uses of ChloraPrep, according to the DOJ press release.
The whistleblower, Dr. Kirk, will receive $3.26 million of the settlement under the whistleblower reward provisions of the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act is a federal law that allows an individual to file a whistleblower lawsuit on behalf of the government for fraud or deceit in connection with the receipt of government funding – in this case, Medicare and Medicaid payments that were ultimately paid to CareFusion.
If you have information regarding healthcare fraud of any kind, including kick-back payments related to federal health benefits or off-label marketing of medical products for unapproved uses, contact the whistleblower lawyers at Levy Konigsberg LLP for a free, confidential consultation.
