Walgreens has agreed to a $106.8 million settlement over drug prescriptions that were billed to government programs but never dispensed, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
The alleged false claims for payment were submitted between 2009 and 2020 and brought “tens of millions of dollars” to the large drug chain, the government alleges. Prescriptions that weren’t picked up by beneficiaries were still processed by Walgreens, which the company said in a statement to press was the result of a software error.
“Adopting new technology and systems can be beneficial for providers, beneficiaries, and federal payors, including Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE,” U.S. Attorney Damien M. Diggs for the Eastern District of Texas said in the announcement. “However, we will not allow companies to hide behind their implementation of ill-conceived technology and systems that result in billing federal healthcare programs for goods and services never provided to beneficiaries. In those situations, we will pursue the companies and ensure that the taxpayer is made whole.”
The settlement resolves three pending whistleblower cases initially filed in September 2015, April 2019 and April 2020, according to settlement documents.
In January 2020, Walgreens disclosed to the government “that issues with its billing systems and practices” had led to billed prescriptions for which it should not have received payment. The company cooperated with the government’s investigation and took “significant...
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