Practice Fusion Inc. (Practice Fusion), a San Francisco-based health information technology (IT) developer, will pay $145 million to resolve criminal and civil investigations after admitting to soliciting and receiving kickbacks from a major opioid company in exchange for using its EHR software to influence physician prescribing of opioid pain medications.
Practice Fusion executed a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay over $26 million in criminal fines and forfeiture. They also agreed to pay approximately $118.6 million to the federal government and states in separate civil settlements. “Across the country, physicians rely on electronic health records software to provide vital patient data and unbiased medical information during critical encounters with patients,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ethan Davis of the Department of Justice’s Civil Division in a press release.
“Kickbacks from drug companies to software vendors that are designed to improperly influence the physician-patient relationship are unacceptable. When a software vendor claims to be providing unbiased medical information – especially information relating to the prescription of opioids – we expect honesty and candor to the physicians making treatment decisions based on that information.”
The resolution addresses allegations that Practice Fusion received unlawful kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for implementing clinical decision support (CDS) alerts in its EHR software in an attempt to increase prescriptions for their drug products. In exchange these payments, Practice Fusion allowed the companies to influence both the development and implementation of the CDS alerts in ways aimed at increasing sales of the companies’ products. Practice Fusion allegedly allowed pharmaceutical companies to participate in designing the CDS alert, select the guidelines used to develop the alerts, and set the criteria that would determine when a healthcare provider received an alert, and in some cases, even allowed them to draft the language used in the alert itself. Over a five-year period (2014-2019), health care providers using Practice Fusion’s EHR software wrote numerous prescriptions after receiving CDS alerts that pharmaceutical companies participated in designing.
Electronic Health Records Vendor Practice Fusion to Pay $145 Million to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations | OPA | Department of Justice https://t.co/J7ZSVQ6cJ0
— C. Michael Gibson MD (@CMichaelGibson) January 28, 2020
“Practice Fusion’s conduct is abhorrent. During the height of the opioid crisis, the company 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,” said Christina E. Nolan, U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont.
“The companies illegally conspired to allow the drug company to have its thumb on the scale at precisely the moment a doctor was making incredibly intimate, personal, and important decisions about a patient’s medical care, including the need for pain medication and prescription amounts. This recovery is commensurate to the nature of Practice Fusion’s misconduct, represents the largest criminal fine in the history of this District, and requires Practice Fusion to admit to its wrongs. It is another example of pioneering healthcare fraud enforcement by the talented Assistant U.S. Attorneys and staff of this U.S. Attorney’s Office, working with their partners in law enforcement. We cannot — and will not — tolerate technology companies influencing patient treatment merely because a pharmaceutical company provided a kickback.”
Practice Fusion, the darling of Silicon Valley.
Electronic Health Records Vendor to Pay $145 Million to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations | OPA | Department of Justice.
EHRs have and always will be junk propped up by government. https://t.co/sROxALOG6l
— Dutch Rojas (@DutchRojas) January 29, 2020
Electronic Health Records Vendor to Pay $145 Million to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations | OPA | Department of Justice https://t.co/bzqe9uAsHf
— Dr. Michael Zelman 🌻 (@drz) January 29, 2020
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