Monday, March 05, 2012

TYC prescribed drug while Attorney General sued over its off-label use with children

Here's an ironic story from a Dallas TV station that speaks as much to the overmedication of youth in the juvenile justice system as to flaws in Medicaid billing. It opens:
The state won a $158 million settlement last month from a pharmaceutical company that the Texas attorney general said promoted an antipsychotic drug for uses not yet approved by federal regulators.

Attorney General Greg Abbott said Johnson & Johnson marketed Risperdal as the drug of choice for children and the elderly for schizophrenia and dementia even though the Food and Drug Administration had not approved its use in children or the elderly.

Yet while the state was suing J&J, the Texas Youth Commission, one of the state's largest purchasers of pharmaceuticals, prescribed it nearly 3,000 times to youth in the Texas prison system, according to financial documents uncovered by NBC 5.

The state's lawsuit, which was filed in 2006, said the state excessively paid pharmacies that dispensed prescriptions for Medicaid patients for a range of unapproved uses.


Anonymous said...

Really a government agency giving unapproved drugs to kids, and you think the focus is the over medication of kids!
Really where dose it end with TYC?

Anonymous said...

FYI Some TJJD people have been snooping around at Giddings, Corsicana and Mart last week. They seem to really care. Several board members were asking alot of questions. Finally someone is taking notice.

Anonymous said...

Don't bet on it. TJJD just took a great leap backwards in putting the education side back under control of corrections.

They never learn.

Anonymous said...

Sunny Jim! Were they taking kickbacks from pharmaceuticals to try experimental drugs on TYC kids?

Everyone in Juvenile Corrections knows that this is a big NO-NO!

Makes you wonder if the female cervical drug the State tried to mandate upon every female child in Texas was being administered to female TYC population?

Anonymous said...

Is this another example of "Raped by The State"?

A Texas PO said...

I have to ask: Did the AG's Office ever notify TYC that they filed a lawsuit over this drug? Experience tells me that they likely did not. Just another example of the left arm not knowing what the right is doing is my guess.

rodsmith said...

so in other words the AG is a typical two-faced lieing politician who is not worth the expense of a funeral!

RAS said...

9:53 All the money flows thru Austin; maybe the visit was just for show.

Anonymous said...

It's business as usual for TJJD (TYC) and nothing's changed. Aside from putting education back under corrections (big mistake) as mentioned above, they just had a conference in Austin regarding youth who were suffering form Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in the units. They have been spending a huge amount of grant money earmarked for this project. However, diagnosis for the effects of TBI in the units come under the oversight of special education. But, last week was the first time education personnel have been brought into this program! Who knows what they have been spending this grant money on all this time!!

Anonymous said...

Aside from the issues of overmedicating kids (or chemical restraints), any medical system, state or private, is likely to be giving some "unapproved drugs to children", as 7:44 said.

Doctors prescribe approved drugs for "off label" or non-listed uses all the time. Perhaps for a use that's had some research behind it that shows the drug works for something other than it's FDA description says, or for an indication in adults that a child has and the doctor prescribes a relatively small dose, hopefully that's been used before.

Now, unless the TYC's medical provider has a policy against any and all off-label uses of drugs, it's probably going on at some level.

Why is the government buying the brand-name drug at all? There have been identical generic versions available for 3 years at least.