Suspended for three years: Pharmacist must also repay provincial drug plan $450K

A Québec pharmacist has been banned from practice for three years after being found guilty of billing the provincial drug plan for fictitious sales totaling about $450,000, failing to protect the integrity of her pharmacy’s inventory, and obstructing the investigation of the Ordre des pharmaciens du Québec. Kim Phuong Vu, who owned four pharmacies in Montreal, claimed her innocence of these three charges even though she has agreed to reimburse the province’s drug plan about $450,000 for services and products the public insurer said her business billed for but did not actually provide, according to case documents posted online by the college. Throughout the investigation and hearings. Vu insisted the discrepancy between total items sold and total items purchased by her business was the result of large volumes of product transfers between her pharmacies. However, she said she could not produce documentation of these transfers because the “small notebooks with carbon” where these transfers were recorded by hand were destroyed after her business computerized inter-pharmacy transfers. Vu also suggested the discrepancy may have been caused in part by sales that were submitted for payment to the provincial drug plan but later cancelled—an explanation the college’s disciplinary board rejected. Read: More than $61K in costs and 14-month suspension for pharmacist who unknowingly filled drug traffickers’ forged prescriptions Vu’s troubles began in May 2017, just three months after she sold one of her pharmacies. The buyer of this business complained to the college that, prior to the purchase, the pharmacy had made false sales. About nine months later, Vu was told by the provincial drug insurer that it was launching an investigation of her business. The college notified her of its investigation the following year. According to case documents, the charge of obstruction is based on Vu’s failure to inform the college she was being investigated by the public insurer. For her part, Vu has denied she falsely invoiced the provincial drug plan and said she had agreed to a repayment plan without admitting liability. She also complained that the college investigator was hostile towards her and her spouse, and biased in his investigations. The disciplinary board concluded, however, that the investigator had acted appropriately within the boundaries of his role. Vu’s suspension penalty amounted to two years each for two charges against her—to be served at the same time—and one year for the third charge, to be served immediately after her two-sentence suspension. The college asked the disciplinary board to also order Vu to pay $29,949 in investigation costs, but the board rejected this request and instead imposed disbursement costs, which were not detailed in the penalty decision document. Read: Healthy romantic prospect? Pharmacist peeked at Tinder date's medical records

Suspended for three years: Pharmacist must also repay provincial drug plan $450K

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