Squeezed by thousands of opioid lawsuits and in the midst of a court-supervised restructuring, Purdue Pharma now appears to be the kingpin in a busted kickbacks ring. According to Reuters, the drugmaker stood at the center of a scheme that netted federal prosecutors a nine-figure settlement earlier this week.
Purdue has been identified as "Pharma Co. X," an unnamed opioid maker at the center of a federal kickback probe that netted a $145 million criminal and civil settlement Monday from Practice Fusion, a subsidiary of Allscripts Healthcare, Reuters reports.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Vermont, Practice Fusion admitted that it had solicited and received kickbacks from a major opioid company––allegedly Purdue, which shelled out roughly $1 million in payments––in exchange for using its electronic health record (EHR) software to influence physician prescribing of opioid pain medications.
"During the height of the opioid crisis, (Practice Fusion) took a million-dollar kickback to allow an opioid company to inject itself in the sacred doctor-patient relationship so that it could peddle even more of its highly addictive and dangerous opioids,” Christina Nolan, U.S. attorney for the District of Vermont, said in a statement.
The case represented the largest criminal fine in federal court history in Vermont, and it was the first-ever criminal action against a vendor of EHRs, prosecutors said.
