Attorney General Maura Healey is investigating whether an Andover pharmacy that specializes in workers compensation patients properly dispensed controlled substances, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.
The Injured Workers Pharmacy, a national mail-order pharmacy, was recently revealed to be the largest recipient of opioid pills in Massachusetts during 2006 to 2012, in data from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Healey’s investigation started before that information came to light last week, the spokeswoman said.
The Injured Workers Pharmacy received 34.3 million pills during that time period, almost three times more than the next biggest recipient in Massachusetts, according to the data, which was released after a lawsuit by The Washington Post and HD Media, publisher of the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia.
The pharmacy has a national clientele and caters to injured workers. It currently ships more than 40,000 prescriptions nationwide, according to its website.
A representative of Injured Workers Pharmacy was not immediately available for comment Wednesday evening.
Healey’s office has been active in pursuing pharmacies over opioid prescribing. In September 2016, she reached a settlement with CVS after finding that its pharmacists had improperly dispensed opioids to patients flagged as high risk because they receive prescriptions for large quantities of the painkillers. The Rhode Island-based drugstore chain paid a $795,000 fine and agreed to require its pharmacists to consult a database of prescriptions before dispensing powerful painkillers.
In January 2017, Walgreens agreed to pay $200,000 and follow certain procedures after Healey found that some Walgreens pharmacies failed to monitor patients’ drug use patterns and didn’t use sound professional judgment when dispensing opioids and other controlled substances.
And in January of this year, the Rite Aid chain agreed to pay $177,000 and to follow state Medicaid rules on dispensing opioids and other drugs. Healey accused Rite Aid of accepting cash payments for controlled substances from Medicaid recipients “in a limited number of instances,’’ instead of billing the agency as required by regulations. In some cases, court documents stated, Medicaid had denied a claim for a controlled substance on the same day as a Rite Aid pharmacist dispensed it for cash.
According to The Washington Post, the newly released DEA data showed that 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills flooded the nation from 2006 to 2012. Massachusetts pharmacies received 1.3 million pills during that period.
Felice J. Freyer can be reached at felice.freyer@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @felicejfreyer
