DOJ sues Rite Aid for missing ‘red flags’ in opioid crisis
Abigail Adcox
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The Department of Justice is suing pharmaceutical giant Rite Aid, alleging that the company knowingly filled unlawful prescriptions for controlled substances that had “red flags” amid the country’s opioid crisis.
The DOJ is arguing that the company’s pharmacists filled hundreds of thousands of unlawful prescriptions for “excessive quantities of opioids” such as oxycodone and fentanyl between May 2014 to June 2019 and intentionally deleted some pharmacists’ internal notes about suspicious prescriptions that did not appear to have a legitimate medical purpose, according to a complaint.
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“According to our complaint, Rite Aid’s pharmacists repeatedly filled prescriptions for controlled substances with obvious red flags, and Rite Aid intentionally deleted internal notes about suspicious prescribers,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said. “These practices opened the floodgates for millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Rite Aid’s stores.”
The DOJ is alleging that Rite Aid violated the False Claims Act by submitting false prescription claims to government health plans, such as Medicare and Medicaid. The government claims that the company advised its pharmacists to be “mindful of everything that is put in writing,” as some pharmacists wrote internal notes about illegitimate prescriptions.
Pharmaceutical chains have been some of the main entities faulted in opioid crisis lawsuits in recent years. They’ve been accused of failing to adhere to federal laws requiring them to assess whether controlled substance prescriptions are written for a legitimate medical purpose in the usual course of the prescriber’s professional practice. Pharmacies have pushed back on these claims, saying that the blame lies with the doctors who are overprescribing the drugs to their patients.
More than 3,000 lawsuits have been filed by states, cities, and local governments against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies for their roles in the opioid crisis. Last year, CVS Health, Walgreens, and Walmart agreed to pay over $12 billion to resolve thousands of lawsuits accusing the pharmacy chains of mishandling prescriptions of opioid painkillers.
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Over 500,000 people died in the U.S. from overdoses involving an opioid between 1999 to 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Washington Examiner asked Rite Aid for comment.