Biopharmaceutical company Amgen Inc. agreed to pay the United States more than $15 million to resolve allegations that the Ventura County company provided illegal financial incentives to physicians and physician groups to induce them to prescribe the cancer drug Xgeva.
The settlement agreement resolves resolve allegations that Amgen violated the Medicare Anti-Kickback Statute and the federal False Claims Act. The Medicare Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits anyone from offering, paying, soliciting or receiving anything of value to generate referrals for items or services payable by any federal health care program.
Xgeva, which is the brand name of the drug denosumab, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in late 2010 for use with certain cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. It is most commonly prescribed for patients with metastatic bone disease in order to prevent skeletal-related adverse events.
In order to increase sales of Xgeva, Amgen used data purchase agreements – which the company called the “Deep Dive” contracts – to provide financial incentives to oncologists and urologists to prescribe Xgeva. The original plan for the Deep Dive contracts called for Amgen to pay doctors to fill out a short survey on the Internet on how they were treating patients with bone cancer, including which drugs were used – whether or not Xgeva was prescribed. However, Amgen altered the original Deep Dive program design by increasing the amount of money it would pay doctors, and by offering such payments only to doctors who prescribed Xgeva for their patients. Amgen’s Xgeva marketing team also was not supposed to know the identities of the doctors who received Deep Dive contracts, but team members had access to that information. Additionally, in a further effort to influence doctors to prescribe Xgeva, Amgen provided cash payments characterized as honoraria to oncologists and urologists for participating in audience response sessions, data market research surveys, and “treatment trends” advisory board programs which touted the benefits of Xgeva.
This settlement resolves a whistleblower lawsuit filed by two Amgen employees, who will collectively receive $2.75 million as their share of the settlement proceeds.
For more information on this case, click here: http://www.justice.gov/usao/cac/Pressroom/2013/095.html