Johnson & Johnson has been embroiled in numerous legal battles surrounding its marketing of its antipsychotic drug Risperdal. The company is alleged to have paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to pharmaceutical giant Omnicare to influence Risperdal sales to nursing home residents.
The 10News I-Team has learned many local skilled nursing facilities are using powerful drugs to control elderly patients’ behavior.Keith Blair suffered from mild dementia, and it wasn’t until after his death that his daughter, Marian Hollingsworth, realized he’d been given antipsychotic drugs.
“CANHR is trying to end the misuse of psychoactive drugs to control seniors. The group created a website which allows anyone to see how many patients are receiving psychoactive drugs at any skilled nursing facility in California. Experts say while using these drugs is sometimes justified, there are dangers in their misuse.”When you see nursing homes that are above 90 percent of their residents are receiving a psychotropic drug, you’re wondering what the hell is going on there,” said Chicotel.
A whistleblower lawsuit filed against Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) didn’t get much attention in the media because the unproven accusations within it — paying kickbacks to nursing home pharmacy Omnicare (OCR) — sounded familiar. But the details in the complaint are worth exploring because they go further than the usual allegations of paying for no-work contracts to boost pharmacy distribution of their drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies view the elderly as a lucrative market. However a panel of experts at the recent Senate Aging Committee forum decided to speak up. Over-medication occurs far too often in those diagnosed with dementia, the panel warned, and as baby boomers age the problem will only worsen. One reason overmedication occurs, per this panel, is family members, caregivers, and nursing home workers often misinterpret patients’ complaints about physical ailments as unruly or aggressive conduct. To manage their behavior, such patients are administered antipsychotics they don’t need.
About five million patients are currently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. “Those in this field have a feeling we’re headed in a very fast train toward the end of a cliff,” stated Patricia Grady, PhD, director of the National Institute of Nursing Research. Director of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, Patricia McGinnis, demanded nursing homes be held “accountable” for the drugs they administer. “The way anti-psychotic drugs are used in nursing homes is a form of elder abuse,” she told the forum. “Instead of providing individualized care, many homes indiscriminately use these drugs to sedate and subdue residents.”
A federal judge has refused to toss out a whistleblower lawsuit backed by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which accuses Johnson & Johnson of involvement in an illegal kickback scheme to push their antipsychotic drugs on elderly nursing home residents that did not need them. The DOJ filed a civil False Claims Act compliant against J&J on January 15, 2010, saying that the company paid millions to Omnicare, Inc. as kickbacks for selling Risperdal to nursing home patients.
According to a recent report from the United Kingdom, side effects of Risperdal and other similar antipsychotics, like Seroquel, Zyprexa and Abilify, could be linked to as many as 1,800 deaths and 1,620 strokes per year in elderly patients with dementia.