In a bird’s-eye view, a client gets in a Walgreens shop on Jan.4, 2024 in San Pablo, California.
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The Department of Justice stated Friday that it took legal action against drug store titan Walgreens for presumably giving countless illegal prescriptions.
The DOJ stated that Walgreens from August 2012 up until the here and now “knowingly” filled up those prescriptions, which “lacked a legitimate medical purpose, were not valid, and/or were not issued in the usual course of professional practice.”
“This lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable for the many years that it failed to meet its obligations when dispensing dangerous opioids and other drugs,” stated Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the DOJ’s Civil Division.
Boynton stated that Walgreens pharmacologists filled up countless prescriptions with “clear red flags that indicated the prescriptions were highly likely to be unlawful.”
The firm “systematically pressured its pharmacists to fill prescriptions, including controlled substance prescriptions, without taking the time needed to confirm their validity,” Boynton stated. “These practices allowed millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Walgreens stores.”
Some Walgreens people passed away of overdose fatalities quickly after obtaining void prescriptions filled up at Walgreens, the DOJ declares.
The 300-page claim was submitted Thursday in UNITED STATE District Court in Chicago.
has actually asked for remark from Walgreens.
The fit declares that although Walgreens provided written plans that showed its understanding of lawful commitments, the firm took various other activities which it understood stopped its pharmacologists from following them.
“Walgreens 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,” the fit stated.
“One such metric was ‘Verify By Promise Time’ (VBPT), which expected a pharmacist to fill a prescription within 15 minutes for a ‘waiter’ (a customer waiting in the pharmacy store for the prescription),” the fit declares.
“Walgreens also tracked pharmacists that dispensed a low rate of controlled substances through its ‘Non-dispensing Pharmacist Report,’ ” the fit stated.
“Walgreens created this metric in part because it believed pharmacists who refused to fill controlled-substance prescriptions compromised Walgreens’s customer service.”