CVS to Pay $650K in Lawsuit Alleging Pharmacies Failed to Provide Consultations

CVS Pharmacy, Inc., with several hundred locations in California including 45 in Riverside County, has been ordered to pay fines totaling more than half a million dollars in a lawsuit alleging its pharmacies “frequently failed” to provide customer consultations for new prescriptions and/or new dosages of existing prescriptions.

Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach announced in a news release Monday that a judge has ordered Rhode Island-based CVS Pharmacy, Inc., to pay a $658,500 settlement in the consumer protection lawsuit brought against the owners of the CVS pharmacy chain in California.

The civil complaint was filed in San Diego Superior Court under California’s unfair competition laws.

Defendants Garfield Beach CVS, LLC, and Longs Drugs Stores, California, LLC, are California limited liability companies owned by parent company CVS Pharmacy, Inc. These CVS defendants own and operate the 850 CVS-branded pharmacies in California.

Regulations enforced by the California Board of Pharmacy's require that a pharmacist must provide personal consultation to a patient receiving a prescription drug not previously dispensed to that patient, or a prescription drug in a different dosage, form, or strength, or on the patient’s request, according to John Hall, spokesman for the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.

In 2011, the Board brought to the District Attorney’s Offices in Riverside, San Diego and Alameda counties the problem of health risks to California pharmacy customers when pharmacists fail to properly provide needed personal consultation to prescription drug customers, according to the news release.

“Subsequent undercover investigations by the District Attorney’s Offices in the three counties in 2011 and 2012 found a number of instances where CVS pharmacies offered consultations by improper personnel and other instances where the pharmacies did not offer or did not provide the required consultations at all,” Hall stated.

Working with the Board, the three District Attorneys’ Offices conducted an undercover investigation of the consultation practices of a number of the major pharmacy chains in California, according to Hall.

“Today’s enforcement action is the first of several such actions anticipated as a result of that investigation,” Hall stated. “The Board provided the District Attorney’s Offices copies of 22 citations issued to CVS by the Board between March 2008 and September 2012 showing a continuing pattern of violations of the consultation requirement.”

Under the terms of the judgment, signed on Friday by San Diego Superior Court Judge Lisa Schall—which was entered without admission of liability by CVS—CVS is permanently enjoined to comply with California’s standards for patient consultations and must fully implement an internal compliance program that CVS began once it learned of prosecutors’ concerns, according to the news release.

In the stipulated final judgment, CVS entities also agreed to pay agency investigative costs of $97,500 and civil penalties totaling $561,000, Hall stated. The Riverside County DA’s Office will receive one-third, or $187,000, of those civil penalties and $19,166 of the costs.

CVS worked cooperatively with the prosecutors to promptly resolve the matter and to implement the new compliance procedures, Hall stated.

Mike DiAngelis, director of public relations for CVS/pharmacy, sent an emailed response to Patch regarding the settlement.

“The Company has worked cooperatively with the District Attorneys involved to reach a settlement agreement that resolves the concerns raised without any admission of wrongdoing,” DiAngelis wrote.

“CVS/pharmacy is committed to providing appropriate patient counseling by pharmacists that complies with all legal requirements and ensures that patients have convenient access to speak with pharmacists about their prescriptions. CVS continually improves its systems and processes, and in all California stores its pharmacy systems and processes ensure that pharmacists personally speak to patients when counseling is required.”

The case was handled in Riverside County by Deputy DA Elise Farrell of the DA’s Consumer Fraud Unit.

Uninformed or improper use of prescription drugs harms an estimated 150,000 Californians each year and contributes to an estimated $1.7 billion statewide in economic loss, according to Hall.