Omnicare is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Covington, Kentucky that specializes in providing pharmacy services to long term care facilities.  IVAX Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a Florida corporation headquartered in Weston, Florida that manufactures generic drugs.  The states and the federal government will receive a total of $112 million in civil damages to compensate Medicaid and Medicare programs for harm suffered as a result of the conduct. As one of the conditions of the settlement, Omnicare and IVAX have also entered into Corporate Integrity Agreements with the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS-OIG”), which will closely monitor the companies’ practices going forward.

These settlements are based on five separate qui tam lawsuits filed by private individuals and consolidated in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts under state and federal false claims statutes.  The government entities alleged that Omnicare and the other entities engaged in several unlawful kickback schemes that included the following:

 - Omnicare solicited and received $8 million in payments in exchange for the company’s agreement to purchase $50 million in generic drugs from IVAX Pharmaceuticals and to drive utilization for the generic drugs for their nursing home patients.

 - Omnicare paid $50 million to certain nursing home chains in exchange for 15-year contracts with each company to refer nursing home patients to Omnicare for the patients’ drug purchases.

 - Omnicare provided pharmacy consultants to long term care facilities throughout the country at below market rates in exchange for the facilities’ agreement to use the company’s pharmacy services exclusively for their patients.

 - Omnicare solicited and received kickback payments in exchange for the company’s agreement to convince physicians to prescribe the antipsychotic drug, Risperdal as an initial drug or in place of competitors’ antipsychotic drugs.

 A team representing the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units conducted settlement negotiations with Omnicare on behalf of the participating states. Team members included representatives from Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois, California and Texas.