McLaren Health Care Corporation (MHCC) has agreed to pay the United States $7,750,000 to resolve allegations that MHCC violated certain provisions of the Controlled Substances Act (the CSA), 21 U.S.C. §§ 801-904. The civil settlement resulted from a years-long investigation by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) into MHCC’s handling of controlled substances. It is the nation’s largest settlement of its kind involving allegations of drug diversion at a healthcare system. DEA began its investigation after learning that an unregistered substance abuse treatment facility was improperly receiving controlled substances from an MHCC subsidiary pharmacy in the Western District of Michigan by calling in prescriptions for “office stock.” DEA expanded its investigation and concluded that certain of MHCC’s controlled substances practices, at numerous facilities across the State of Michigan, violated the CSA and its implementing regulations. The government alleged, among other things, that McLaren Port Huron Pharmacy and McLaren Yale Pharmacy in the Eastern District of Michigan dispensed Schedule II drugs without written prescriptions and despite “red flags” that those drugs were being diverted by MHCC’s pharmacist-in-charge.
