Pharmacy Daily | $100k fine for “excessive dispensing”

AUTHORITIES in Victoria have ordered a pharmacist to pay a fine of $100,000 plus costs of over $10,000 in relation to the ongoing supply of Schedule 4 items on fraudulently altered prescriptions.

Huyen Tran pleaded guilty to 10 charges, which represented a total of 457 separate contraventions of the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981, over a three year period between May 2015 and Oct 2018.

The offences involved supplying codeine-containing analgesics on 281 occasions "upon prescriptions which she had reason to believe had been fraudulently altered," as well as nine instances where items were supplied in excess of instructions written on the scripts.

Tran also failed to notify the state's health department on 167 occasions that she was "being requested, directed or called upon to sell, supply or dispense codeine-containing analgesics to a person in greater quantities than appears to be reasonably necessary".

A total of 52,368 tablets of codeine-containing analgesics were supplied from Tran's pharmacy on fraudulently altered prescriptions during the period, equating to 39 tablets per day.

During an investigation into the issue, the pharmacist told officers she didn't think anything was amiss, because the patient was a regular customer.

The pharmacist "could not justify her treatment of the patient, and just blindly followed prescriptions that were being presented to her," according to a Vic Department of Health statement.

The investigation was prompted after an analysis found the patient had obtained the highest dose of codeine-containing analgesics in Vic from Tran's pharmacy between Jun and Oct 2018.

The magistrate said she was aware the fine would impose a major burden on the pharmacist.

"But there must be a way the court can - immediately - show the rest of the community, particularly those that operate in your particular professional realm, that these are offences they ought not enter into under any circumstances whatsoever.

"They need to take their professional integrity very, very seriously to ensure offences of this nature simply do not occur in the first place," she added.