Can You Pronounce CVS? “W-A-L-G-R-E-E-N-S”
Jay Pee is an optimist. This breaks my heart a little. I had such confidence that WAG does it right. Oh Well.
Walgreen to Pay $80 Million Fine in D.E.A. Inquiry
By BARRY MEIER
Published: June 11, 2013 The New York Times
The Walgreen Company, the nation’s biggest pharmacy operator, agreed on Tuesday to pay $80 million to resolve federal charges that it failed to properly control the sales of narcotic painkillers at some of its outlets.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Agents said Walgreen failed to properly control the sale of painkillers at some of its drugsto
Officials at the Drug Enforcement Administration described the fine as the biggest ever paid by a pharmacy chain. As part of the settlement, the license of a Florida facility used by Walgreen to distribute controlled drugs was revoked for two years.
D.E.A. officials said that many of the drugs dispensed at the facility made their way to the black market, including oxycodone, a strong narcotic that is also the active ingredient in OxyContin.
Under the agreement, Walgreen committed to establish better internal controls. It acknowledged that practices at a distribution facility and some of its pharmacies in Florida did not meet standards.
Over the last year, federal officials have acted against several major wholesalers of prescription painkillers, like Cardinal Health, as well as drugstores. Such drugs are involved in some 16,000 overdose deaths annually.
Federal officials have said that distributors of painkillers often turn a blind eye to suspiciously large orders for medications by pharmacies, and that drugstores fail to properly identify customers who intend to divert drugs to the streets.
Some distributors have sought to limit their liability by more closely monitoring distribution pipelines and cutting off customers. But patients say the crackdown has made it difficult for them to get needed medication, and some druggists complain that big distributors like Cardinal have clamped down on the amount of painkillers they can buy.
The black market has been rampant in Florida, where until recently hundreds of so-called pain clinics operated, including many where patients received prescriptions for opioids after cursory examinations. Since 2009, federal officials have brought charges against 59 doctors in connection with the illegal prescribing of painkillers.
In their action against Walgreen, federal officials said the chain had failed to properly account for the sales of painkillers or report suspicious sales. The Walgreen distribution facility in Florida once served as the largest supplier of prescription painkillers to pharmacies in that state, they said.
“National pharmaceutical chains are not exempt from following the law,” Mark R. Trouville, a D.E.A. special agent in charge, said in a prepared statement.
In a statement released Tuesday, Walgreen, based in Deerfield, Ill., said, “As the largest pharmacy chain in the U.S., we are fully committed to do our part to reduce prescription drug abuse.”
The company said that it expected that the financial impact of the settlement and associated costs would lower results in the third quarter by about 4 to 6 cents a share. In fiscal 2012, Walgreen had sales of $72 billion.
Another major distributor, AmerisourceBergen, disclosed last June that it faced a federal criminal inquiry into its oversight of painkiller sales. West Virginia officials filed a lawsuit against 14 drug distributors, including Cardinal and AmerisourceBergen. The companies have denied wrongdoing.
http://www.oregon.gov/pharmacy/Imports/OBOP-Pharmacy_Working_Conditions_Survey_Results11.11.pdf
Oregon pharmacists say: We’re not burger flippers
Published: Sunday, May 27, 2012, 6:51 AM Updated: Sunday, May 27, 2012, 8:51 AM
By Susan Nielsen, The Oregonian
Patrick Bowman opened Tualatin Pharmacy last year. Before opening his store in Tualatin, Bowman worked as a temporary floater to large chain stores. The experience, he says, was not good. In a recent survey and in testimony to the Oregon State Board of Pharmacy, many Oregon pharmacists who work in chain stores express concern about patient safety and workload. Oregon pharmacists are fed up.
They say they’re overwhelmed with the crush of prescriptions totaling hundreds per day. They’re tired of long days with rare bathroom or meal breaks. Mostly, they’re worn down by the stress that comes with dispensing life-or-death medicines in a burger-flipping environment.
So they’re fighting back through the board that licenses their employers. Last week, the Oregon State Board of Pharmacy approved new rules governing working conditions in pharmacies. These rules may compel some of the big chain stores, which are coming to dominate the pharmacy world, to adopt more patient-centered business practices.
This is good news for people in Oregon who regularly get prescriptions for themselves, their children or elderly parents: The status quo simply isn’t safe enough.
“Patients aren’t being treated well,” says Oregon pharmacist Blake Rice, a former pharmacy board member. “The board is finally bringing into immediate relief the staffing issue at outlets.”
In 2011, the board invited the state’s 5,000-plus licensed pharmacists to answer an online survey about working conditions. The 1,400 respondents highlighted a troubling gap between chain outlets and independent pharmacies in Oregon. Only one quarter of chain store pharmacists said their working conditions promoted safe and effective patient care, compared with more than three quarters of pharmacists at independent stores.
Chain pharmacists also warned about their workload and patient safety. They further railed against the endless incentives that chains often use to encourage people to transfer and fill prescriptions: the gift cards, the bonus coupons, the fuel points. The incentives may be good for luring people to buy groceries, but they also create billing headaches and dangerous prescription mix-ups as patients swap pharmacies to save $10 or rack up fuel points.
“I feel like I’m sort of a glorified gas station attendant now,” says Portland chain pharmacist Belinda Misterek, who works for one of the major grocery-store chains and who testified last week to the state board. “People who don’t need prescriptions, they’re just filling them to get their fuel points. … These working conditions are awful.”
The survey and testimony spurred the board into action. Under the new rules, the state board can fine pharmacies — and even suspend or revoke their licenses — for creating a work environment that puts patient safety at risk. The rules require employers to provide rest periods and meal breaks and to allow pharmacists enough time to do their jobs, including patient counseling and prescription verification.
The board wisely backed down from a few heavy-handed proposals that would have restricted what businesses can say when they advertise. However, the board bucked the chain-store lobby and prohibited pharmacies from “incenting or inducing the transfer of a prescription absent professional rationale,” which is intended to curtail some of the frenetic pharmacy-swapping.
“I think soon you will start to see changes,” says Lis Houchen, a regional lobbyist for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. ”Each company will have to look at the rules and see what they need to do. There’s probably going to be a trial period.”
“A Pharmacy is a professional environment. It is not the deli counter”.
Gary Schnabel, the executive director of the pharmacy board, agrees. He says the board’s intent isn’t to dictate business operations, but rather to discourage any activity that becomes detrimental to patients, from inadequate staffing to crazy-making promotions. “It’s about the environment,” he says. “A pharmacy is a professional environment. It’s not the deli counter. I think some of the stores had forgotten that.”
It’s impossible to know for certain if pharmacy error rates are going up, or if chain stores in Oregon have more problems than independent ones. The system relies largely on self-reporting and the data aren’t reliable enough to confirm suspected trends. But the feedback from pharmacists is telling, and it mirrors what customers see from their side of the counter. I’ve seen it many times, waiting in line for medicine at the local Safeway and watching the staff scurry around like fast-food workers. In fairness, I’ll confess to adding to their stress by being irritated when my prescription is not ready instantly, as if it were a pound of turkey or a Tillamook cheeseburger rather than actual medicine. So these new rules represent progress. Ideally, they will push chains to step up their staffing and allow pharmacies to treat customers more humanely, as patients. But there’s more to the story here. Real change may require pharmacy customers — with their prescriptions in hand and internal clocks ticking wildly — to be a little bit more patient, too.