By Russ Britt, MarketWatch
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) ? Cardinal Health Inc. said Tuesday it has settled charges by the Drug Enforcement Administration that the company improperly controlled the distribution of pain medication at a Florida facility.
Cardinal Health /quotes/zigman/135665/quotes/nls/cah CAH -1.24% ?has agreed to a two-year suspension of its license to distribute controlled medicines from its facility in Lakeland, Fla., spokeswoman Debbie Mitchell said. The drug distribution giant?s center there stopped handling those substances earlier this year after DEA officials found it was sending large amounts of pain pills to a small handful of pharmacies, raising concerns of black-market sales.
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The company also has agreed to improve ?antidiversion? methods by keeping tighter controls on where the substances go once they leave its distribution centers.
?We?re continually investing in systems and people to monitor suspicious orders,? Mitchell added.
DEA officials said in a statement that the Lakeland hub had supplied 12 million doses of the addictive painkiller oxycodone to four area pharmacies during a three-year period. The DEA suspended operations at the facility on Feb. 3.
The suspension was the second for the Lakeland facility, as it was closed in December 2007 for distributing hydrocodone, a painkiller in the same family as oxycodone to what it calls ?rogue? online pharmacies.
?Over the past several years, Florida has been at the epicenter of the nationwide prescription-drug abuse epidemic,? the DEA?s statement said. ?Various illicit schemes operating in Florida, and those who supply them, have been responsible for the diversion of millions of dosage units of prescription drugs containing oxycodone or hydrocodone that are in turn redistributed along the entire Eastern seaboard and parts of the Midwest.?
Mitchell said Cardinal Health would use its Jackson, Miss.-based center to handle the distribution in the interim. That facility has been servicing the 2,500 customers in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida handled by Lakeland since that facility stopped handling controlled substances that might be attractive for street sales.
Cardinal Health shares were down 1% to $42.23 at the close.
Elsewhere, shares of Accretive Health Inc. /quotes/zigman/570964/quotes/nls/ah AH +3.77% ?continued on the road to recovery in the wake of charges leveled by Minnesota officials. Shares were up nearly 4% to $11.83.
Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson has accused the consultant of employing overly aggressive collection tactics for its client, Fairview Health Services, in the state. The matter has drawn the attention of various political figures, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Al Franken.
Accretive contends it did not employ overly aggressive tactics and last week responded to questions from Franken about its measures.
/quotes/zigman/135665/quotes/nls/cah
US : U.S.: NYSE
Volume: 2.39M
May 15, 2012 4:02p
/quotes/zigman/570964/quotes/nls/ah US : U.S.: NYSE
Volume: 1.26M
May 15, 2012 4:02p
Rev. per Employee$336,753
Russ Britt is the Los Angeles bureau chief for MarketWatch.
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