Sum Ting Wong

[Joe Guy]

How did this happen?

Walgreens to pay $7.5M in settlement over phony pharmacist

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Walgreens will pay $7.5 million to settle with California authorities after an employee was criminally charged with impersonating a pharmacist and illegally filling more than 745,000 prescriptions in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Kim Thien Le has pleaded not guilty to felony impersonation charges. Prosecutors said that from late 2006 through 2017, Le used the license numbers of registered pharmacists in order to impersonate them and dispense prescriptions at Walgreens stores in Santa Clara and Alameda counties.

The prescriptions allegedly included more than 100,000 for opioids such as fentanyl, morphine and codeine.

Le herself didn't have a pharmacist license, prosecutors said.

The district attorneys in both counties filed a consumer protection action against Walgreens. Prosecutors on Monday announced that the pharmacy giant agreed to settle. The company will pay $7.5 million in penalties, costs and remedial payments.

“The burden is on the company to make sure its employees are properly licensed and to complete a thorough background check," Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said in a news release announcing the settlement.

In a statement Monday, Walgreens said Le hasn't worked for the company since 2017.

“Pharmacy quality and safety are top priorities, and upon learning of this issue, we undertook a re-verification of the licenses of all our pharmacists nationwide,” the statement said.

The complaint alleged Walgreens failed to vet Le thoroughly when it promoted her to positions requiring a license and failed to make sure that its internal systems were strong enough to prevent an employee from evading them.

source

[MajGenl.Meade]

It shows initiative to start a new Korea in pharmaceuticals

[Crackpot]

What’s the bold for? Is it to point out how many opioids are prescribed?

[Burning Petard]

NO, none, zilch, nada, evidence presented ant ANY of the gazillion prescriptions were incorrectly filed.

I am sure, that given normal human tendencies, there were some errors. “Pharmacy quality and safety are top priorities, and upon learning of this issue, we undertook a re-verification of the licenses of all our pharmacists nationwide,” the statement said. But no data that indicates the service provided by this unlicensed worker were any worse than others.

snailgate

[Joe Guy]

What’s the bold for? Is it to point out how many opioids are prescribed?

No. I just like to use bold letters sometimes like other people do.

[Crackpot]

I don’t find that number. All that high to tell you the truth. I bet half of those filled are antibiotics the rest are various long term prescription drugs. Especially if you have a lot of business perception plans like mine in the area. Where most long term prescriptions are filled via mail order leaving only immediate and short term meds (antibiotics painkillers etc) to be filled by the drugstore

[MGMcAnick]

How hard can it be to impersonate a pill pusher? All you need is a white coat, a phony diploma for your wall, and the ability to decipher prescriptions as they are written. It's not hard. I worked in a small pharmacy when I was in high school, and I can still read a scrip. No problem.

Now where can I get a white coat? Shoot, I may want to become a doctor instead.

[Joe Guy]

I don't believe the number of opioid prescriptions is unusually high either. The reason I used bold letters was because I used bold for the total number and thought it made sense to use it for the other number.

Other than that, the question I meant to put out there is how did the woman get the job in the first place?

[ex-khobar Andy]

100,000 over 10 years = around 200 a week or 40 a day in a five day week. Assuming that she supervised a crew of people who actually put the pills into bottles that probably is not an outrageous number. She is probably not, from these numbers, a 'pain pill pusher' - simply a run-of-the-milll impersonator.

[Joe Guy]

And as BP noted, there's nothing in the article about her stealing or creating prescriptions. She may have been very good at the job but didn't have the license to do it.

[Big RR]

The biggest problems which could arise from an untrained pharmacist stem from not recognizing drug interactions, not recognizing improper dosages written on the prescriptions, and not recognizing that the wrong pills were provided. A friend who is a pharmacist says he has to routinely contact physicians to confirm dosages (which are usually just mistakes) and also to let the physician know what other drugs the person is taking which could interact with each other. Also, record keeping for controlled substances, including avoiding over prescribing them to a particular patient is an important job of the pharmacist, but since there is no mention of this, Walgreens likely had a good system installed in the particular pharmacy to flag this. The counseling provided to patients would also be suspect.

[TPFKA@W]

How hard can it be to impersonate a pill pusher? .

Nurses rely on them to get the math straight, a talent I would expect next to no one on the board to have.

[Big RR]

What sort of math @W--dosages?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Who is next to no one? Oh I see! Next Uno Wun!