Walgreens Opioid Epidemic MDL Overview:
- Who: A judge overseeing a bellwether opioid trial surrounding claims against Walgreens heard recorded testimony from Eric Stahmann, a corporate manager for the company.
- Why: Stahmann reportedly told the judge that Walgreens directed its corporate and field leadership teams not to share the prescription habits of doctors with store pharmacists.
- Where: The bellwether trial is in regard to the opioid epidemic in San Francisco.
A judge overseeing a bellwether trial surrounding claims Walgreens and others helped fuel an opioid epidemic in San Francisco heard testimony that the pharmacy store chain tracked but did not share the prescription habits of doctors.
Walgreens reportedly did not make the prescription habits, which it kept in a database, available to its stores because it was worried that it could “cloud the judgment” of pharmacists filling prescriptions, Law360 reports.
A corporate manager for Walgreens’ “pharmaceutical integrity team,” who said the data the company has on record is only for prescriptions filled at their distinct locations, made the recorded testimony.
Walgreens’ pharmaceutical integrity team was created in 2013 as part of an agreement with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) that was made to resolve claims revolving around violations involving recordkeeping and dispensing, Law360 reports.
Walgreens Acknowledges Withholding Doctor Prescription Habits
The Walgreens corporate manager, Eric Stahmann, reportedly answered affirmatively when asked if the company directed its corporate and field leadership teams not to report the statistics about the prescription habits of doctors to pharmacists.
Information contained in Walgreens’ corporate database but withheld from store pharmacists included the amount of prescriptions filled in a store by a specific su
