Omnicare, which is the largest long-term care pharmacy in the U.S., agreed to pay a $15.3 million penalty for allegedly allowing opioids and other controlled substances to be dispensed without valid prescriptions.
The CVS Health (CVS) unit failed to track limited stockpiles of the medicines that were stored in so-called emergency kits, which are supposed to be dispensed by long-term care facilities on an emergency basis, but only with valid prescriptions, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Omnicare also repeatedly failed to document and report emergency prescriptions.
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Hi Ed,
Thanks for replying. You suspect correctly. In my experience, most don’t think past the “CVS” name in the “CVS long-term care pharmacy ….” headline.
Add in the word “opioids” and you’ve secure the click-throughs but also create confusion, as it did upon reading the actual story. Your choice, I guess.
All that said, it might be worthwhile to follow up with a story about “why” CVS acquired Omnicare, despite CVS having insights to public (and likely due diligence) info about their bad acts.
While I’m no fan of corporate behemoths the headline is needlessly misleading. As the article points out, but only if you’d kept reading, is that Omnicare *wasn’t* acquired by CVS until well *after* the misdeeds were noted by the DEA.
So, if one never read the article one might erroneously assume CVS was at fault in the instances written about. Sure, technically CBS paid the fine but not were they at fault.
I expect more accurate reporting from STAT, whom I rely upon for generally excellent news coverage.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for the note.
I understand your point. Yes, as the story noted, CVS acquired Omnicare after the alleged violations took place.
But Omnicare is currently the CVS long-term care pharmacy unit. It’s not inaccurate to describe it that way. The long-term care pharmacy unit was penalized. The headline did not refer explicity to CVS or the CVS retail pharmacy operations, for instance.
I suspect you might disagree, but I appreciate that you read STAT and that you took the time to write.
Happy to chat more,
ed at pharmalot