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At least one corporate culprit in the opioid epidemic appears not to have learned its lesson, as CVS Pharmacies finds itself under scrutiny again. This time Ohio's Board of Pharmacy has found a litany of challenges, including severe understaffing that seems to be creating a chain reaction of problems.
A report by the Ohio Capital Journal says Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has deemed the findings "very concerning." In inspections that took place between 2020 and 2022, rampant turnover was found to have created severe understaffing that may have then led to "hundreds of problems, including dirty conditions, lack of controls over dangerous drugs and wait times as long as a month for prescriptions. They also found adulterated and expired drugs on CVS pharmacy shelves," the Capital Journal wrote.
Astute readers will note the mention of lack of controls over dangerous drugs, as CVS was deemed a contributor to the substance abuse plague to the degree that it was part of a $17.3 billion settlement with drug makers and pharmacies. Ohio is set to receive $670.6 million of that over 15 years.
Now, according to one inspection report, a single CVS in Willoughby, Ohio, was shown to have had 1,800 doses of controlled substances couldn't be accounted for. And, in at least one case, a patient was given the wrong medication and got sick.
"Patient safety is our highest priority, and decisions about staffing, labor hours, workflow process, technology enhancements and other operational factors are made to ensure we have appropriate levels of staffing and resources in place in our pharmacies," CVS spokesman Matthew Blanchette told the Capital Journal.
Results of multiple reports over two years indicate otherwise. Is it possible that being asked to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the damage already done was deemed a cost of doing business for CVS?
"That's why we have a pharmacy board. These kinds of things do happen all the time and they happen in all kinds of pharmacies and pharmacy chains. Like everything with human behavior, mistakes get made and controls are not observed," Yost said. "The question is, does CVS rise to a different level from the kind of background level of mistakes that we would typically expect to see and I don't have the answer to that."
Surely regulators and policymakers will do all in their power to ensure patients who deal with CVS are safe. In the meantime it seems CVS executives have some soul-searching to do.