Cancer Center Pays $250,000 After Drug Diversion Scheme

The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance has agreed to pay $250,000 and enact prescription-drug safeguards to settle a federal fraud investigation involving a former employee’s theft of more than 96,000 oxycodone pills between 2011 and 2013..

The case involved a nurse who falsified and altered prescriptions for 42 patients to divert painkillers from Seattle Cancer Care Alliance’s (SCCA) pharmacy. After SCCA officials discovered the scheme, they fired the nurse and reported the fraud to federal authorities.

The unidentified nurse later committed suicide, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

The investigation by the Department of Justice, in partnership with the Drug Enforcement Administration, determined that SCCA’s pharmacists violated the Controlled Substances Act when they dispensed controlled substances to the nurse who was conducting the fraud. Specifically, DOJ found that that the pharmacists were not acting in the “usual course of their professional practice” when they failed to take steps to verify that the high-dose, high-quantity painkillers “prescribed” were appropriate for the patients purportedly receiving them, based upon each patient’s prior prescription history. In fact, many of the former patients whose identities were used in the scheme were “opiate naïve.” Had these individuals actually received and taken the high-quantity, high-dose oxycodone filled in their names, they could have been harmed as a result.

Authorities say the nurse’s scheme unraveled in 2013, after a former SCCA patient received a legitimate painkiller prescription for an unrelated job injury.

The state Department of Labor & Industries denied the patient’s claim because the state’s Prescription Monitoring Program showed the patient was receiving pain medication from SCCA. After the patient disputed that, L&I notified the cancer center, which discovered the fraud.

Justice Department and federal Drug Enforcement Administration investigators later determined SCCA pharmacists violated the Controlled Substances Act by failing to verify that the painkillers were prescribed appropriately before dispensing them to the nurse, according the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Under the settlement, SCCA admits no legal wrongdoing but will pay $250,000 to the federal government. The center also agreed to require its pharmacists to consult with prescribers or take other reasonable steps to confirm patient prescriptions, and it will report the nurse’s fraud in center records for each patient whose identity was used to garner false prescriptions.

SCCA, a nationally recognized outpatient cancer treatment and research center, issued a statement that in part denied its pharmacists were at fault.

“While we believe the settlement is in the best interests of our patients, staff, pharmacists and physicians, we do not agree with the conclusions of the U.S. Attorney’s Office that our pharmacists or pharmacy violated the law,” the center’s statement said.

The statement added that the accused nurse perpetrated “a complex drug-diversion scheme” that deceived numerous SCCA staff members. The cancer center declined to identify the late nurse.

“The patients, physicians, pharmacists, and pharmacy staff were victims of (the) scheme,” the statement said. “Although no medications were diverted from patients, the SCCA notified each patient whose identity was used.”

In the course of its internal probe of the matter, SCCA consulted with national experts and examined its own procedures and processes. The center has made several improvements to prevent similar prescription fraud from occurring in the future, the statement said.