The Insys Net Gets Wider

In mid-March 2018, five New York City doctors were arrested and charged with accepting bribes and kickbacks from Insys Therapeutics to prescribe high volumes of Subsys, a fentanyl-based cancer pain medicated spray. The five doctors – Gordon Freedman, 57, of Mount Kisco; Jeffrey Goldstein, 48, of New Rochelle; Todd Schlifstein, 49, of Manhattan; Dialecti Voudouris, 47, of Long Island City and Alexandru Burducea, 41, of Little Neck – all practiced in Manhattan and pled not guilty in federal court to an unsealed indictment charging them with several charges, including conspiracy. The five doctors allegedly collected tens of thousands of dollars working for Insys’ “Speakers Bureau” from August 2012 through 2016. According to prosecutors, the Bureau was originally created to educate doctors and other practitioners about Subsys, but in practice, it was used to induce doctors to prescribe large volumes of the spray by paying them speaker program fees. As has been typical in these situations, the speakers did not conduct any speeches, but the events were typically social affairs with no actual educational program. For their participation in these events, the doctors earned kickbacks anywhere from $68,000 to $308,000 and all five were – at some point – among the top twenty prescribers of Subsys nationwide. However, prior to joining the Bureau, all five of the doctors rarely (if at all) prescribed the drug. In addition, it is alleged that in 2013, Goldstein and Schlifs...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs