Pharmacy Daily | Vic pharmacist suspended

A PHARMACY owner has been barred from practising for six months because of his failure to notify authorities about potentially fraudulent prescriptions.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard that Ah Kow Foo repeatedly dispensed unusually high quantities of alprazolam and diazepam to a patient using fraudulent or forged prescriptions, while he was the co-owner of Laird's Pharmacy in Clayton, between Sept 2012 and Aug 2013.

On 10 Aug 2015 the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) informed the Pharmacy Board of Australia that Foo was the subject of an investigation into an individual, Ms AD, who obtained significant quantities of drugs of dependence from at least fourteen pharmacies during the relevant time by presenting forged or fraudulently altered prescriptions.

"The DHHS investigation concluded that, had Mr Foo contacted Ms AD's purported prescriber, or reported the excessive prescribing to the Department as he admits he ought to have done, the fraudulent nature of the prescriptions would have been discovered and/or the extent of the unlawful supply would have been of a magnitude that might have been explained as an honest and reasonable mistake," the tribunal papers said.

A DHHS review found genuine prescriptions presented by Ms AD varied between two and six tablets of alprazolam and diazepam a day.

However, by the end of the relevant period Foo was dispensing the fraudulent prescriptions for 11 tablets of alprazolam 2mg and 13 tablets of diazepam 5mg.

Should Foo wish to resume his career as a pharmacist when his suspension is completed, his registration will be subject to a number of conditions, including that he must be supervised by a registered pharmacist not including his wife.

He will also be required to complete the PSA's Ethics and Dispensing in Pharmacy Practice course by 30 Dec 2019 and present a certificate of completion to the Pharmacy Board of Australia.