HARRISBURG, PA —The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that the United States has filed a civil lawsuit against Dr. Peter J. Baddick, III, a family medicine practitioner, alleging that he issued medically unnecessary prescriptions for Subsys, a fentanyl-based spray manufactured by Insys Therapeutics, Inc., and used to treat breakthrough cancer pain. Dr. Baddick saw patients at his practice, Penn Medical Group, P.C., which operated in Lehighton, Pennsylvania. Penn Medical Group ceased operations in September of 2019.
According to U.S. Attorney John C. Gurganus, the Complaint alleges that Dr. Baddick violated the False Claims Act by prescribing Subsys to patients for whom the fentanyl-based drug was either not medically necessary or otherwise inappropriate. These prescriptions were submitted to and paid through the Medicare and TRICARE federal healthcare programs. The United States specifically alleges that from April of 2015 through December of 2015, Dr. Baddick prescribed Subsys to two patients, neither of whom had cancer and continued to write Subsys prescriptions for both patients after they raised concerns about the drug’s effects. The federal healthcare programs paid $308,701.94 for eighteen Subsys prescriptions to these two patients.
The United States previously prosecuted Insys under a criminal information filed in the District of Massachusetts, and Insys agreed to a global resolution of the government’s separate civil...
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