In an aerial view, a buyer enters a Walgreens retailer on Jan.4, 2024 in San Pablo, California.
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The Department of Justice mentioned Friday that it sued pharmacy big Walgreens for allegedly shelling out thousands and thousands of illegal prescriptions.
The DOJ mentioned that Walgreens from August 2012 till the current “knowingly” stuffed these prescriptions, which “lacked a official medical objective, weren’t legitimate, and/or weren’t issued within the traditional course {of professional} follow.”
“This lawsuit seeks to carry Walgreens accountable for the various years that it failed to fulfill its obligations when shelling out harmful opioids and different medicine,” mentioned Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the DOJ’s Civil Division.
Boynton mentioned that Walgreens pharmacists stuffed thousands and thousands of prescriptions with “clear purple flags that indicated the prescriptions had been extremely prone to be illegal.”
The firm “systematically pressured its pharmacists to fill prescriptions, together with managed substance prescriptions, with out taking the time wanted to verify their validity,” Boynton mentioned. “These practices allowed thousands and thousands of opioid tablets and different managed substances to circulate illegally out of Walgreens shops.”
Some Walgreens sufferers died of overdose deaths shortly after getting invalid prescriptions stuffed at Walgreens, the DOJ alleges.
The 300-page lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
CNBC has requested remark from Walgreens.
The go well with alleges that though Walgreens issued written insurance policies that mirrored its understanding of authorized obligations, the corporate took different actions which it knew prevented its pharmacists from complying with them.
“Walgreens prioritized income over security and compliance by implementing insurance policies and practices that required pharmacists to fill prescriptions rapidly and left pharmacists with out sufficient time or assets to train their corresponding accountability,” the go well with mentioned.
“One such metric was ‘Verify By Promise Time’ (VBPT), which anticipated a pharmacist to fill a prescription inside quarter-hour for a ‘waiter’ (a buyer ready within the pharmacy retailer for the prescription),” the go well with alleges.
“Walgreens additionally tracked pharmacists that distributed a low price of managed substances by way of its ‘Non-dispensing Pharmacist Report,’ ” the go well with mentioned.
“Walgreens created this metric partially as a result of it believed pharmacists who refused to fill controlled-substance prescriptions compromised Walgreens’s customer support.”
