The White House has a pharmacy — and it was a mess, a new investigation found
statnews.com
There’s a pharmacy in the White House — or, at least, there’s a sign that says “Pharmacy,” though the people in charge insist it isn’t one. Whatever they call it, the office has had enough internal complaints to warrant a government watchdog investigation.
And its findings were hardly encouraging:
- One former pharmacy staff member told investigators that a doctor once asked if the staffer could “hook up” someone with a controlled substance “as a parting gift for leaving the White House.”
- The office dispensed controlled medications like Ambien and Provigil without verifying the patient’s identity.
- It let people grab over-the-counter medicines from open bins.
- And upwards of $640,000 in taxpayer funds were wasted in just three years, though that number is fuzzy, because so many records were poorly kept and even handwritten.
“If this had been a traditional pharmacy, they certainly would have been cited by their state board of pharmacy,” said Douglas Hoey, CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association, “and there’s probably even an outside chance that they’d be shut down by their state board of pharmacy, if this was a pharmacy operating outside of the cocoon of the White House,” he said.
The investigation also focused on improper record-keeping practices. The White House’s pharmacy did not keep records of controlled substances in accordance with federal law. For example, records detailing the receipt of fentanyl, ketamine, morphine, and Ambien at the White House’s pharmacy were handwritten, illegible, crossed-out, and error-filled, the report said.
Former White House Medical Unit medical providers told investigators that ineligible White House staff members received controlled substance prescriptions and free specialty care, including surgery, at military facilities. Even though the office was only supposed to cover care for 60 enrolled patients, the office instituted its own policy that effectively let any of the 6,000 people working in or around the White House seek health care services. Those were all inappropriately billed to the Defense Department.
Officials also offered aliases to executive branch VIPs for “enhanced privacy.” They would remove the patient’s actual name from the electronic medical record and use alternate demographic data and identifiers. Walter Reed eventually had to waive almost $500,000 in outpatient care fees for senior government officials from 2017-2019, partially because they were unable to bill patients who got this treatment. |
