Phony prescriptions

Health professionals must be on guard for fraud

The opioid epidemic being what it is, health professionals should be ever vigilant for people trying to get prescriptions under false pretenses. So when the state attorney general’s office last week announced the arrests of four people for using fake prescriptions, the most remarkable detail was that two of them allegedly used prescription blanks taken from the doctors’ offices where they worked.

One, Sylvia Marino, a nurse at a local neurology practice, was charged with writing about 118 prescriptions for 12,000 pills over about four years. The Leechburg resident allegedly wrote the prescriptions for herself; for Melissa Riggle, a medical office coworker from Lower Burrell who also faces charges; and for a third person. An investigation began after a pharmacist tried to verify one of the prescriptions but couldn’t.

In a separate case, Joyce Gallagher, of Mount Washington, who worked as an office manager at a local dental practice, has been charged with taking blank prescriptions near the end of her employment there and using them to write 92 phony prescriptions for 2,900 pills over about four years. She allegedly wrote prescriptions for herself and family members. A dentist got in touch with authorities after two pharmacies contacted him with concerns about prescriptions.

In a third case, Corrina Hoggard of Franklin Park has been charged with filling 54 prescriptions that she told authorities she obtained from a woman she met last year in a hospital emergency department.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro thanked the doctors and pharmacists who cooperated with his office, but one wonders, why wasn’t the abuse uncovered long before now?

The opioid epidemic has received so much attention, and the death toll has been so high, that it’s troubling to think prescription blanks can wander off without doctors noticing. Every prescription pad in use should be identified with a particular prescriber and the prescriptions written from it regularly reconciled with patient records. Pads not in use should be locked up, just like narcotics are supposed to be, and an inventory of prescription blanks regularly made.

While pharmacists played a role in bringing at least two of the cases to the authorities’ attention, it’s concerning that the defendants allegedly gamed pharmacies for years before being found out. In one case, multiple relatives with the same last name were filling prescriptions. That wasn’t a red flag?

People addicted to opioids never stop looking for ways to get them, so people who write and fill prescriptions can’t let their guard down for a second.