STAT Plus: Feds says a CVS long-term-care pharmacy improperly refilled prescriptions, jeopardizing patients
Omnicare, the nation’s largest long-term-care pharmacy, was accused by federal authorities of fraudulently billing government health care programs by dispensing hundreds of thousands of old and invalid prescriptions to residents of nursing homes and assisted-living facilities.
The CVS Health unit, which operates about 160 pharmacies, allegedly failed to obtain new prescriptions from doctors after the old ones expired or ran out of refills. Instead, Omnicare assigned new numbers to old prescriptions and continued dispensing medicines for months — and sometimes years — after the prescriptions expired, according to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in New York.
