A federal judge has ordered CVS Health subsidiary Omnicare to pay $948.8 million in damages and penalties for submitting fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid claims.
The order, issued July 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, comes after a jury found Omnicare liable for more than 3.3 million false claims related to prescriptions lacking valid physician authorization, according to court documents obtained by Becker’s.
The case, initially filed in 2015 by whistleblower Donald Gale under the False Claims Act, accused the subsidiary of dispensing drugs without current prescriptions across thousands of long-term care facilities.
In April, the jury found Omnicare’s practices resulted in $135.6 million in federal losses, and the final judgment tripled the damages under the False Claims Act’s treble damages provision.
The nearly $949 million award marks one of the largest in recent history against a pharmacy provider, according to the documents.
