Knoll pays millions in settlement to pharmacies
Price fixing, info suppression led to payment
Knoll Pharmaceuticals has agreed to pay two community pharmacy organizations $27.5 million in a recently adjudicated settlement after the drug company was found to have suppressed information that generic levothyroxine was bioequivalent to Knoll’s Synthroid.
The National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) and the National Community Pharma cists Association (NCPA) will use the funds, which are being paid in the form of a grant in annual payments of $5.5 million from 1999 to 2003, to fund the Institute for the Advancement of Com munity Pharmacy, which was established by the two organizations to administer the funds.
Both organizations represented a New Jersey drug store chain, RxD Pharmacies, the plaintiff in a suit against Knoll. In another part of the settlement, 37 state health plans will divide $41.8 million from Knoll, which will go to state health plans that purchased Synthroid.
Plans for the settlement funds
The pharmacy organizations say they plan to use their part of the settlement to enhance accreditation efforts for pharmacists for disease management; establish community pharmacy residencies; improve pharmacy training and public education; and establish scholarships within pharmacy schools.
The two organizations also have recently published a white paper on the expansion of nondispensing roles for community pharmacists, "Implementing Effective Change in Meeting the Demands of Community Pharmacy Practice in the United States."
In addition to the Knoll settlement, NACDS and NCPA will receive $18.5 million from another recently finalized settlement of a price fixing ruling against 20 drug companies that has been in the works for three years. In 1996, a federal judge ruled the drug companies fixed the prices of dozens of drugs sold to retail pharmacies.
The settlement will pour $723 million into the nation’s community pharmacies, paid directly in proportion to each pharmacy’s drug purchases between October 1989 and February 1995.
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