Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Surprise Packages




They never call, they never write: Still no word from our friends at Omnicare (OCR) about their deal with former COO Glen Laschober, who left on the 19th of January and, as we speculated at the time, either was or wasn’t fired.

The FDA loves writing letters, though, and it turns out that on January 11 - a week before Mr. Laschober’s last trip through the Omnicare cafeteria line - it sent one to the company to complain about sloppy drug packaging. The letter used harsh language like “serious deviations,” “cross-contamination” and “adulterated” and cited several instances of “mix-ups,” a technical term referring to the appearance of bits of Drug A in bottles of Drug B and pills of different dosages all showing up in the same container.

Perhaps Omnicare should approach Northwestern Mutual to obtain the rights to that "Quiet Company" slogan, having stayed mum about all this until the FDA posted the letter on its website yesterday. At that point, the company noted that the FDA's warning "does not raise new issues." Actually, since the agency has been complaining about some of these packaging errors since 1996, that was kind of their point, dude.

Omnicare, please get in touch with us soon; we’re worried about you. And don’t use your problems as an excuse to self-medicate. You never know what might be in that bottle.