$45,000 in fines for pharmacist who entered into unethical agreements

A Quebec pharmacist has been slapped with $45,000 in fines after he admitted to questionable arrangements with several ophthalmology clinics, a patient support program intermediary and an out-of-province pharmacy that compounded 5% cocaine eye drops.Éric Beaulieu, a pharmacist owner in Saint-Bruno until November 2023, pleaded guilty to all three charges levelled against him by the Ordre des pharmaciens du Québec. In addition to the fines, he has also been ordered by the regulator’s disciplinary council to pay investigation and hearing costs.This was not Beaulieu's first time in front of the disciplinary council. He was found guilty in 2021 of three other charges in a separate case and fined a total of $55,000. He is currently appealing the guilty finding and fines in this other case.With regards to this latest decision, the most serious charge—for which Beaulieu was fined $30,000—involved an agreement he had to distribute the drugs Eylea and Lucentis to eight ophthalmology clinics. According to the case document, in September 2021, a competing pharmacist reported that he received an order from four ophthalmology clinics to stop serving all patients treated in these four clinics. “Several hundreds of these patients were automatically transferred overnight to Éric Beaulieu’s pharmacy,” said the pharmacist.Read: Spied on by a competitor, probed over a legitimate contract: Pharmacist's ordeal ends with acquittalAll told, according to college investigators, Beaulieu’s arrangements involved 25 prescribing doctors in eight clinics, 20,564 services of Eylea and Lucentis for 4,442 patients for a total drug value of more than $38 million.In his defence, Beaulieu said he believed the agreements he entered into with the ophthalmology clinics were legal and that patients were also free to choose which pharmacy they wanted to deal with. He also noted that the patients’ usual pharmacies were informed about the medications these patients were getting from his pharmacy.The second charge, which earned Beaulieu a fine of $10,000, was the result of his agreement with Sentrex Health Solutions, a patient support provider. According to the disciplinary council, this agreement—which had a value of about $114,500—contravened an article of the pharmacist’s code by ethics which restricts them from obtaining clients through an intermediary.Read: Quebec disciplinary process: a ‘traumatic’ experienceThe third charge, which came with a fine of $5,000, involved Beaulieu’s dealings with a doctor trained in Argentina who wanted to use cocaine eye drops as an anesthetic. Beaulieu told the disciplinary hearing that other options were suggested to this doctor but in the end he found a pharmacy in Moncton, N.B., to compound the eye drops.Beaulieu bought the drops—which he said had a stability period of seven days and which he kept in a locked cabinet—from the Moncton pharmacy and then sold them to the doctor. If he had to do it all over again, he told the disciplinary hearing, he would have referred the doctor to the compounding pharmacy instead of getting involved directly in the transactions.Read: ‘Although she asked for help . . . she did not get it’: Pharmacist found guilty of negligence says understaffing created risk for errors

$45,000 in fines for pharmacist who entered into unethical agreements

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