Walgreens pays $106.8 million to settle prescription billing fraud charges

Walgreens Boots Alliance has agreed to pay $106.8 million to settle taxes it fraudulently billed to the U.S. government for prescriptions that were never filled, the Justice Department said Friday.

The Justice Department said Walgreens violated the federal False Claims Act between 2009 and 2020 by submitting payment claims to Medicare, Medicaid and other health care programs for prescriptions it processed but were never picked up.

That resulted in the pharmacy chain receiving tens of millions of dollars for prescriptions it never provided to patients, the department said.

“Federal health care programs provide essential health care services to millions of Americans,” said Brian Boynton, chief 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.”

Walgreens, based in Deerfield, Illinois, did not admit liability in agreeing to settle.

“Due to a software error, we mistakenly billed some government healthcare programs for a relatively small number of prescriptions that our patients submitted but never picked up,” Walgreens said in a statement .

“We corrected the error, reported the issue to the government and voluntarily refunded all overpayments.”

Friday’s settlement resolves three whistleblower lawsuits filed in Florida, New Mexico and Texas.

The Justice Department said the payment took into account Walgreens’ cooperation and its “significant” steps to modernize its internal pharmacy management system to ensure billing problems do not reoccur.

Walgreens previously repaid $66.3 million in settled claims and is being credited for that amount.

The chain recently operated about 8,600 stores in the United States, but said in June that it plans to close a significant number of underperforming stores over the next few years.

Steven Turck, a former Walgreens pharmacy manager who filed the Texas case, will receive $14.92 million in the settlement. Andrew Bustos, a former Walgreens district pharmacy supervisor who filed the New Mexico case, will receive $1.62 million.

wShares in algreens Boots closed up 37 cents, or 4.2%, at $9.21 on Friday.

TOPICS
Fraud