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Tuesday 28 January 2020

U.S. attorney announces $145M settlement in opioid case

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — Pharma Co. X or say if any and forfeiture and, in a
A San Francisco-based other people involved in separate civil settlement,
health information technol- the case would face crimi- Practice Fusion agreed to
ogy company will pay $145 nal or civil penalties. pay $118.6 million to re-
million to resolve criminal Practice Fusion has since solve the allegations that it
and civil charges that it been acquired by the elec- accepted kickbacks from
helped set up an electronic tronic health records com- Pharma X and other com-
health records system that pany Allscripts. In a Mon- panies and caused the us-
encouraged physicians to day statement, Allscripts ers of its software to submit
prescribe opioids to pa- Vice President Brian Farley false claims for federal in-
tients who might not need said the conduct predated centive payments.
them, federal prosecutors his company's acquisition The case represented the
in Vermont said Monday. U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan, center, gestures during a news of Practice Fusion. largest criminal fine in fed-
Vermont U.S. Attorney conference in Burlington, Vt., Monday Jan. 27, 2020. "Since learning of this eral court history in Vermont
Christina Nolan said the matter we have further and it was the first ever
company Practice Fusion, $1 million payment from a "The companies knew all of strengthened Practice criminal action against a
Inc., took kickbacks from company identified only as this," Nolan said. "The deci- Fusion's compliance pro- vendor of electronic health
a major opioid company "Pharma Co. X" in exchange sion to contravene medi- gram," Farley said. "Allscripts records, said a statement
in exchange for using its for creating an alert in cal guideline was greed- recognizes the devastating from the U.S. Attorney's of-
software to influence phy- Practice Fusion's electronic driven and at the behest impact that opioids have fice.
sicians to prescribe opioid health record system. The of Pharma Company X's had on communities na- The settlement required
pain medication. alert would cause doctors marketing department and tionwide, and we are using Practice Fusion to admit its
Court documents released to write more prescriptions Practice Fusion allowed it our technology to fight this wrongdoing, invest heavily
at a Burlington news con- for extended release opi- because it wanted $1 mil- epidemic." in compliance and an in-
ference said that Practice oids than were medically lion." The settlement included dependent oversight orga-
Fusion solicited a nearly necessary. Nolan refused to identify $26 million in criminal fines nization. q