The\u00a0Department of Justice\u00a0said Friday that it sued pharmacy giant\u00a0Walgreens\u00a0over allegedly dispensing millions of unlawful prescriptions.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0DOJ\u00a0said that Walgreens from August 2012 until the present \u201cknowingly\u201d filled those prescriptions, which \u201clacked a legitimate medical purpose, were not valid, and\/or were not issued in the usual course of professional practice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable for the many years that it failed to meet its obligations when dispensing dangerous opioids and other drugs,\u201d said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the DOJ\u2019s Civil Division.<\/p>\n
Boynton said that Walgreens pharmacists filled millions of prescriptions with \u201cclear red flags that indicated the prescriptions were highly likely to be unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company \u201csystematically pressured its pharmacists to fill prescriptions, including controlled substance prescriptions, without taking the time needed to confirm their validity,\u201d Boynton said. \u201cThese practices allowed millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Walgreens stores.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some Walgreens patients died of overdose deaths shortly after getting invalid prescriptions filled at Walgreens, the DOJ alleges.<\/p>\n
The 300-page lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Walgreens in a statement said, \u201cWe are asking the court to clarify the responsibilities of pharmacies and pharmacists and to protect against the government\u2019s attempt to enforce arbitrary \u2018rules\u2019 that do not appear in any law or regulation and never went through any official rulemaking process.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not stand by and allow the government to\u00a0put\u00a0our pharmacists\u00a0in a no-win situation, trying to comply with \u2018rules\u2019 that simply\u00a0do not exist,\u201d Walgreens said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWalgreens stands behind our pharmacists, dedicated healthcare professionals who live in the communities they serve, filling legitimate prescriptions for FDA-approved medications written by DEA-licensed prescribers in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The suit alleges that although Walgreens issued written policies that reflected its understanding of legal obligations, the company took other actions which it knew prevented its pharmacists from complying with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWalgreens prioritized profits over safety and compliance by implementing policies and practices that required pharmacists to fill prescriptions quickly and left pharmacists without enough time or resources to exercise their corresponding responsibility,\u201d the suit said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne such metric was \u2018Verify By Promise Time\u2019 (VBPT), which expected a pharmacist to fill a prescription within 15 minutes for a \u2018waiter\u2019 (a customer waiting in the pharmacy store for the prescription),\u201d the suit alleges.<\/p>\n
\u201cWalgreens also tracked pharmacists that dispensed a low rate of controlled substances through its \u2018Non-dispensing Pharmacist Report,\u2019\u201d the suit said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWalgreens created this metric in part because it believed pharmacists who refused to fill controlled-substance prescriptions compromised Walgreens\u2019s customer service.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Department of Justice\u00a0said Friday that it sued pharmacy giant\u00a0Walgreens\u00a0over allegedly dispensing millions of unlawful prescriptions. The\u00a0DOJ\u00a0said that Walgreens from August 2012 until the present \u201cknowingly\u201d filled those prescriptions, which \u201clacked a legitimate medical purpose, were not valid, and\/or were not issued in the usual course of professional practice.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThis lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}