Company News: Nursing Homes, Johnson & Johnson, Berkshire Hathaway

For-profit nursing homes are more likely to overbill taxpayers for treatments patients don’t need or never receive, according to a November report by U.S. federal health inspectors. The study found that 30 percent of claims submitted by for-profit homes were improper, compared with 12 percent for nonprofits. Investor-owned facilities control more than three-quarters of the $105 billion nursing-home market and typically earn a 20 percent profit margin on Medicare patients, compared with 9 percent for nonprofit operators. Federal prosecutors brought 120 now-resolved civil and criminal cases against nursing homes from 2008 to 2012, twice the number of the prior five years.

Johnson & Johnson won accelerated federal approval for its tablet Sirturo, the first new treatment against tuberculosis in 40 years. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared Sirturo for use by adults whose illness is resistant to existing drugs. The expedited approval was based on the second of what are typically three clinical trials, an option the FDA has when a drug fills an unmet need. There were as many as 400,000 new cases of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis in 2011, according to the World Health Organization.