Florida Medicaid Antipsychotics 6

A St. Petersburg Times special report Drug research: To test or to tout? By Robert Farley, Times Staff Writer April 13, 2008 The landscape had changed in the two years since the Florida Behavioral Health Collaborative set treatment guidelines favoring atypicals. The CATIE study had been published. Tens of thousands of patients had sued drug companies that made atypicals. The academic community was more divided about what was best. Last July, the collaborative convened another group of experts to revisit whether Florida should rely so heavily on atypicals. Two dozen mental health professionals met at the Renaissance Hotel at Tampa’s International Plaza. They gathered in the Kalamata Room, done up in the milquetoast style of a classic hotel meeting room: long tables arranged in a square, at each seat a glass of water and a name tag. The bland setting belied the grand stakes: The vote could swing hundreds of millions of dollars in pharmaceutical company profits. Cost to taxpayers, however, had no place in the conversation. The meeting’s two main hosts were Rajiv Tandon, chief of psychiatry for the state Department of Children and Families, and Robert Constantine, head of the Florida Behavioral Health Collaborative. Both believe in atypicals. In two papers they co-wrote in late 2006 and early 2007, they said the CATIE study missed the point: The goal is to create a good antipsychotic effect without the tremors, making atypicals the better choice. Constantine, a research …