Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and Walgreen Co. (together, Walgreens) have agreed to pay $106.8 million to resolve alleged violations of the False Claims Act and state statutes for billing government healthcare programs for prescriptions never dispensed. Walgreens, headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, operates one of the largest retail pharmacy chains in the country. The government alleges that, between 2009 and 2020, Walgreens submitted false claims for payment to Medicare, Medicaid and other federal healthcare programs for prescriptions that it processed but that were never picked up by beneficiaries. Walgreens instead restocked and resold the same prescription to someone else without reversing the claim submitted to the government, collecting payment twice on these prescriptions. As a result, Walgreens received tens of millions of dollars for prescriptions that it never actually provided to healthcare beneficiaries.
As part of the resolution, Walgreens received credit under the department’s guidelines for taking disclosure, cooperation and remediation into account in False Claims Act cases. Among other actions, Walgreens implemented enhancements to its electronic pharmacy management system to prevent this from occurring in the future and self-reported certain conduct. Because Walgreens previously refunded $66,314,790 pertaining to the settled claims, Walgreens will receive a credit for this amount.
