The former owner of a Cherry Hill nursing home won a $100 million whistleblower settlement against PharMerica Corp., a pharmacy that serves nursing homes and other long-term care institutions, the plaintiff’s Philadelphia law firm Berger Montague PC announced Wednesday.
In a lawsuit originally filed in 2011, Marc Silver — who owned Silver Care Center — alleged that PharMerica violated the Anti-Kickback Statute and False Claims Act by underpricing some drugs Medicare paid for in order to secure other Medicare- and Medicaid-funded drug business that was much more lucrative.
“The size of the settlement speaks to the tremendous work we did, and the risk that PharMerica faced at trial if we had presented the evidence we had amassed showing that PharMerica had reaped huge profits for years by using illegal kickbacks to win contracts,” Silver’s lawyer, Sherrie R. Savett, said.
The lawsuit specifically accused PharMerica of giving nursing homes a financial break on drugs that they had to pay for under Medicare Part A, in exchange for the right to supply drugs to the same nursing homes under the larger Medicare Part D and Medicaid programs. The two latter programs were more profitable for PharMerica, according to Berger Montague.
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