Walgreens, the pharmacy chain, has reached a settlement of $106 million to resolve multiple lawsuits accusing them of submitting false payment claims to government health care programs. The lawsuits were filed by the U.S Justice Department on behalf of three former employees from Walgreens’ pharmacy operations in New Mexico, Texas, and Florida.
The allegations claimed that between 2009 and 2020, Walgreens submitted false payment claims to Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs for prescriptions that were processed but never picked up by the patients. The settlement documents state that Walgreens fully cooperated with the investigation and has taken steps to improve its electronic management system to prevent similar issues from occurring in the future.
Walgreens released a statement, explaining that a software error led to the inadvertent billing of a small number of prescriptions that were never picked up by patients. They promptly corrected the error, reported the issue to the government, and voluntarily refunded all overpayments.
It’s important to note that while settling the lawsuits, Walgreens did not admit any legal liability in the cases.
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