CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) - Ohio must turn over the names of pharmacies and physicians that filled millions of opioid prescriptions in the state but haven’t been named as defendants in litigation over the narcotics, the judge overseeing federal multidistrict opioid litigation has ruled.
Ohio resisted providing the information from its database, the only comprehensive list of every narcotic prescription filled in the state. Defendants including CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid argued they needed the information to identify “pill mill” doctors and irresponsible pharmacies they say were the real cause of the “public nuisance” Ohio and cities and counties within the state accuse them of creating.
The Ohio Board of Pharmacy cited privacy statutes for refusing to reveal the names of individual physicians and pharmacies, but U.S. District Judge Dan Polster rejected the state’s arguments, noting New York had turned over similar information to defendants in opioid litigation there
“This suggests OBOP's concerns about privacy and statutory restrictions are overblown,” he wrote.
The pharmacies have fought for data from the Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System, or OARRS, since the beginning. Their search took on new importance after Judge Polster allowed them to be sued over their retail pharmacy operations in addition to wholesale distribution practices. The pharmacies won an emergency ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth CIrcuit blocking planned trials over so-called dispensing claims, but the judge immediately set two new cases for trial by Lake and Trumbull counties.
In those cases, the pharmacies are accused of ignoring warning signs of drug abuse and diversion to fill millions of medically unnecessary opioid prescriptions. The drug chains say national data shows at least 42% of the controlled-substance prescriptions in the two counties – some 71 million dosage units between 2006 and 2004 – were filled by pharmacies that haven’t been sued.
They argue OARRS is the only database that shows who wrote each prescription and where it was filled. The drugstore chains hope that data will reveal the excess prescriptions that supposedly caused a public nuisance were actually written by high-prescribing physicians who sent their patients to multiple pharmacies to avoid suspicion.
Ohio did produce records with unique identifiers for each patient, physician and pharmacy but the pharmacy chains said they needed the names of physicians and pharmacies to identify the parties they say are to blame.
Ohio argued a defendant company like Walgreen could use the OARSS data to identify specific patients who had obtained prescription drugs at a Wallgreen store, then use the identifying code to uncover personal information about prescriptions filled elsewhere. Judge Polster said that wasn’t a valid concern since the defendants agreed not to do this and invited a judicial order prohibiting them from identifying patients through the OARSS data.
The defendants don’t need patient names, just data on who wrote prescriptions and which pharmacies filled them, the judge wrote.