Walgreens will pay $106.8 million to resolve allegations it billed U.S. government health care programs for prescriptions it never dispensed.
The Justice Department says the fraudulent billing took place for more than a decade and was brought to light by whistleblowers.
Walgreens allegedly submitted false claims for payment to Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health care programs for prescriptions that it processed but that were never picked up by beneficiaries. Walgreens received tens of millions of dollars for prescriptions that it never actually provided between 2009 and 2020.
As part of the resolution, Walgreens received credit under the department’s guidelines for taking disclosure, cooperation and remediation into account in False Claims Act cases. Among other actions, Walgreens implemented enhancements to its electronic pharmacy management system to prevent this from occurring in the future and self-reported certain conduct. Because Walgreens previously refunded $66,314,790 pertaining to the settled claims, Walgreens will receive a credit for this amount.
“Federal health care programs provide critical health care services to millions of Americans,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “We will hold accountable those who abuse these programs by knowingly billing for goods or services they did not provide.”
The federal share of the recovery is $91,881,530, and a total of $14,933,259 will be returned to individual states, which jointly fund state Medicaid programs, through separate settlement agreements with the Medicaid participating states.
The federal government’s settlement with Walgreens resolves three cases pending in the District of New Mexico, Eastern District of Texas and Middle District of Florida under the whistleblower provision of the False Claims Act.
Steven Turck, a former Walgreens pharmacy manager, filed the whistleblower suit in the Eastern District of Texas and will receive $14,918,675. Andrew Bustos, a former Walgreens district pharmacy supervisor, will receive $1,620,000.
Walgreens, headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, operates one of the largest retail pharmacy chains in the country.
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