Pharmacist Consultants and Kickback
The New York Times reported the investigation into pharmacist's mistakes and fraud at nursing homes. Pharmacists responsible for reviewing the medication of patients in California nursing homes routinely allowed inappropriate and potentially lethal prescriptions of antipsychotic medications, and failed to correct other potentially dangerous drug irregularities, according to recent state investigations.
In reports obtained by The Bay Citizen, the department found that in 18 of the 32 investigations conducted in California nursing homes between May 2010 and June 2011 — 17 of the 32 were in the Bay Area — pharmacists failed to red-flag cases in which residents were inappropriately prescribed powerful antipsychotic medications like Seroquel, a drug used to treat schizophrenia. Pharmacists also overlooked or approved cases in which medications were prescribed at questionable levels or in unsafe combinations that could put patients at risk of seizures, accidents or even death, according to the public health department.
The state investigations also showed a “probable correlation” between the inadequate review of nursing home patients’ medications by pharmacists and the failure of those nursing homes to pay a fair market rate for the pharmacists’ services. A 1982 anti-kickback law requires nursing homes to pay a fair rate for pharmacy services to discourage consulting pharmacists from endorsing or extending the prescriptions of expensive, and potentially dangerous, drugs. A majority of the nursing homes where the state found patients who were inappropriately prescribed antipsychotic medications were paying below-average fees for pharmacy services. The state anti-kickback law bans nursing homes from accepting below-market rates “from any pharmacist or pharmacy as compensation or inducement for referral of business to any pharmacy.”
“The consultant pharmacists’ review, which is intended to identify unnecessary or potentially inappropriate drugs among nursing home residents, is defective in the state of California,” said Dr. Jonathan Evans, a geriatrician and the vice president of the American Medical Directors Association. He called the problem “widespread.”
A report last year by the United States Department of Health and Human Services revealed that, in nursing homes nationwide, at least 40 percent of all Medicare claims for so-called atypical antipsychotics, like Risperdal, are inappropriate, given in excessive doses, given for too long, given without the need for use, without adequate monitoring or “in the presence of adverse consequences” and should be reduced or discontinued.
