Illicit Dispensing Of Opioids Costs Andover Drug Co. $11M

Illicit Dispensing Of Opioids Costs Andover Drug Co. $11M

Introduction

Injured Workers Pharmacy (IWP), a national mail-order pharmacy based in Andover, Massachusetts, has agreed to pay $11 million over a lawsuit brought by the state alleging that the company illegally dispensed thousands of prescriptions for dangerous drugs, including opioids like fentanyl.

According to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the pharmacy marketed a large number of opioids in Massachusetts between 2006 and 2012, which included 34.2 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills. Last year, Attorney General Maura Healey's office announced an investigation against the company, which sells the drugs to workers' compensation patients.

The investigation revealed that the pharmacy violated Massachusetts consumer protection laws as it did not have proper policies to determine if the prescriptions were valid, and practiced unlawful marketing methods like paying law firms for patient referrals.

The settlement agreement also specified conditions to change the pharmacy's business practices, which include:

• Hiring a full-time compliance officer to help identify red-flag prescription behavior.
• Having a data analyst and software to help identify at-risk prescribers and patients.
• Establishing measures to help at-risk patients, including hiring pain management specialists, to help review patients' treatment plans with their doctors.
• Providing an offer to dispense naloxone, a drug used to treat overdoses, at no out-of-pocket cost to the patient.
• Taking precautions to identify problematic prescribers, including using data and dispensing software that allows pharmacists to see a prescriber's entire history.
• Disincentivizing filling prescriptions of controlled substances by eliminating compensation based on volume and stopping payments for referrals.

Congresswoman Lori Trahan, D-Westford, appreciated Healey's work and stated that she introduced the Medication Access and Training Expansion Act, in the House, where the legislation has similar goals to the settlement agreement.

Opioids are on the market for ages and have been used basically for pain relief for post-surgical pain, cancer-related pain, chronic or persistent pain. Opioids when used in proper dosage and along with a combination of other pain treatments, work in relieving pain successfully, unless there is a misuse or abuse of the drug. 

Companies manufacturing opioids convinced the medical community that these medications were not addictive and were purely beneficial. This belief raised the number of prescriptions and sales unwarrantedly, resulting in a mass misuse of these drugs, to the extent that this was identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a public issue and named it an 'opioid crisis.'