The Society

Statutory committee

Fraudulent claims lead to striking off
Name restored to register after rehabilitation
Direction not to restore name of former addict who stole cocaine

Fraudulent claims lead to striking off

A pharmacist who had been convicted of fraud, and who had claimed payment for medicines he had not supplied, has had his name removed from the register.

At its meeting on November 15, 2000, the Statutory Committee inquired into the case of Mr Fraser Oswin Smith, of 71 Crowhill Road, Bishopbriggs, Glasgow. A complaint had been received from the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society that at Glasgow sheriff court on March 22, 2000, Mr Smith had pleaded guilty to and been convicted of fraud, for which offence he had been fined £5,000 and ordered to pay compensation of £267.62.

It was also alleged that a number of claims for excessive repeat medications had been submitted for payment by the pharmacy of which Mr Smith had been in charge.

Mr Geoff Hudson, of Penningtons (solicitors), appeared on behalf of the Society.

Mr Smith was present at the inquiry, and represented himself.

Altered prescriptions

The committee heard that between March 6 and April 16, 1996, Mr Smith, who at that time was running Dukes Road Pharmacy, 196 Dukes Road, Burnside, Glasgow, had been presented with a number of prescriptions calling for medicines to be dispensed on a monthly basis. He had altered the prescriptions to indicate that they ordered the medicines to be dispensed weekly although he had, in fact, dispensed them monthly. The altered prescriptions had been submitted for payment and £267.62 overclaimed. Mr Smith had been convicted of having obtained that sum by fraud.

The allegations concerning excessive repeat medications arose from investigations made by one of the Society's inspectors following a complaint by Greater Glasgow Health Board at the same time as the police investigations into the fraud.

Irregularities involving four patients had come to light. It had been the pharmacy's practice to ask patients' doctors to provide repeat prescriptions on their behalf. In one case, four prescriptions each for three months' supply of Tenoretic tablets had been issued between March 11 and May 10, 1996. The patient concerned had said she had received one month's supply at a time but the prescriptions had been submitted for payment on the basis that 12 months' supply had been made. Two of the prescriptions had been endorsed as having been dispensed on the same day.

A second case involved the issue of three prescriptions over the same period, each for one Ventolin inhaler and 100 prednisolone tablets, when the patient stated that in 1996 she had received only one inhaler and had had the prednisolone tablets “once or twice” only. All three prescriptions had been submitted for payment.

In another instance, a prescription calling for “acid sol aqueous 2 per cent, 1 OP” was altered to read “acid sol 2 per cent, aqueous 2 per cent, Feldene gel, 1 OP (500g)”, which was significantly more expensive.

A final case cited was where a typing error had been made on a prescription reading “690 Arthrotec tablets” when the doctor had intended to prescribe 60 Arthrotec, the amount usually supplied to that patient. The pharmacy had not contacted the doctor and had claimed for 690 tablets.

Mr Smith had been unable to give satisfactory explanations for those incidents. He said he had been stressed and tired when he had endorsed the prescriptions.

Delay

A police witness told the committee that investigations into the case, which had begun in 1996, had been delayed by difficulties in obtaining evidence of the medicines supplied to the patients from the homes in which they were resident. Several homes were concerned but only two had kept proper documentary records of medication received by patients. Then, when the case had been ready to come to court, the hearing had been adjourned at very short notice no less than four times before finally going ahead in March, 2000.

Before giving the committee's decision, the chairman (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, QC) said that the committee was concerned about the long time that it had taken for the case to come before it. However, no blame could be attributed to the Society; the primary cause was the time taken to investigate the matter before it came before the court.

Turning to the conviction, the chairman said the charge to which Mr Smith had pleaded guilty was a serious one. It had been calculated that the Greater Glasgow Health Board had been defrauded of some £267. The committee noted that that was over a period of four weeks only and the charges related to only two out of as many as eight nursing homes to which Mr Smith's pharmacy provided dispensing services.

On the second allegation, of dispensing excessive repeat medication, the committee found it unacceptable that such practices should have been allowed to occur. It was particularly alarming that claims had been made for payment on prescriptions where it appeared nothing was dispensed to the patient. In one instance, a prescription had been amended without justification. Another item that caused concern was the prescription that had called for 690 tablets when the correct figure should have been 60. “That is a quite extraordinary number of tablets to be prescribed', said the chairman. It should have been immediately obvious that a mistake had been made. Instead, advantage was taken in the most opportunistic way and a claim submitted for 690 tablets.

On the conviction alone, it was likely that the committee would have ordered Mr Smith's removal from the register. But when there were in addition a list of practices in his pharmacy that were unacceptable on any professional basis, the committee had no hesitation in ordering that he should be struck off.

Mr Smith had three months in which to appeal.

Name restored to register after rehabilitation

A former pharmacist who had recovered from an addiction to temazepam has had her name restored to the register by the Statutory Committee.

At its meeting on October 12, 2000, the committee inquired into the case of Mrs Anne Longworth, of 17 Ordsall Close, Sandbach, Cheshire. Information had been received that on May 6, 1992, Mrs Longworth had pleaded guilty to two counts of theft and had been sentenced to two years' probation and ordered to pay £628 compensation and £150 costs. A further count of theft was also taken into account. The inquiry was held in order to decide whether Mrs Longworth's name should be restored to the register.

Mr Geoff Hudson, of Penningtons (solicitors), appeared in order to place the facts of the case to the committee.

Mrs Longworth represented herself at the hearing.

The committee heard that between October 31 and November 22, 1991, Mrs Longworth, who had been addicted to temazepam, had taken a quantity of temazepam tablets from the pharmacy at which she was then employed. She had also taken about £1,340 from the same employer on December 23, 1991, and a further sum of £128 on December 12, 1991, all of which money had been repaid.

Mrs Longworth had voluntarily removed her name from the register in 1992 by not paying her retention fee for that year. The removal had taken effect on April 22, 1992, before the offences had gone to court.

Treatment

Since then, Mrs Longworth had had treatment for her addiction and had ongoing support from the pharmacists' health support programme. For some years she had held a responsible position with a bank, from which she had recently resigned to take voluntary work in a pharmacy to help prepare herself for a return to her profession.

The co-ordinator of the Pharmacists' Health Support Scheme gave evidence and references were submitted in support of Mrs Longworth's application.

Giving the committee's decision, the chairman (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, QC), said that an offence such as that for which Mrs Longworth had been convicted, if it had been committed by a registered pharmacist, would have resulted in removal from the register. In the present case, the committee had to decide whether to direct that Mrs Longworth's name should not be restored, or not be restored until the committee directed otherwise. The committee had heard evidence that Mrs Longworth was fit to practise as a pharmacist and took the view that her name should be restored. However, the committee wanted to be sure that after such a long period away from pharmacy, Mrs Longworth's knowledge was completely up to date. It decided to allow her restoration to the register immediately, in return for an undertaking that she would not practise as a pharmacist in sole control of a pharmacy for six months, and would take up appropriate continuing education courses.

Direction not to restore name of former addict who stole cocaine

A former pharmacist who had stolen cocaine from her employers to feed her addiction should not have her name restored to the register, the Statutory Committee has decided.

At its meeting on November 14, 2000, the committee considered the case of Dr Susanne Begley, of Flat 5, 11 Wilbury Road, Hove, East Sussex. Information had been received that on February 10, 2000, at Chichester crown court, Dr Begley had pleaded guilty to and been convicted of three counts of theft and one count of attempted theft; a further eight offences were taken into consideration. On April 7, 2000, she had been sentenced to two years' imprisonment, suspended for two years, with a two-year supervision order, and ordered to pay £200 costs. On a separate matter, a complaint had been received from the council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society that on January 27, 2000, Dr Begley had dispensed 500ml methadone mixture, 1mg per ml, against a prescription calling for 300ml temazepam liquid, 10mg per 5ml.

Mr Geoff Hudson, of Penningtons (solicitors), appeared in order to put the facts of the case before the committee.

Dr Begley was present at the hearing.

The committee heard that the thefts, each of 5g cocaine hydrochloride, had taken place in June and July, 1999. The attempted theft had been in July, 1999, and had also related to cocaine.

The offences had come to light when the manager of the pharmacy at which Dr Begley had been working as a locum found two containers each of 5g cocaine hydrochloride in the Controlled Drugs cupboard. Her suspicions had been roused because that was not a usual item of stock. On investigation, it transpired that orders had been placed for 5g of cocaine on June 28, July 5 and July 19, 1999, all dates when Dr Begley had been working at the pharmacy. On July 26, when Dr Begley was again employed as a locum, the pharmacy's management was alerted that a further 5g of cocaine had been ordered. When medicines were delivered later in the day, the police intercepted the deliveryman and obtained from him an invoice signed by Dr Begley. They entered the pharmacy and confronted Dr Begley, who admitted to theft of cocaine, saying she had wanted it for her own use. She had also admitted stealing cocaine while working at other pharmacies.

The dispensing incident had occurred when Dr Begley had been in charge of a pharmacy at Deal, Kent. The prescription had been dispensed on January 27, 2000, and on January 31, 2000, the patient had returned to the pharmacy to query the fact that the medicine bottle was labelled methadone but the pharmacy label read temazepam. The pharmacist in charge that day reported the error to the Society's inspector.

Dr Begley told the committee she had been treated for her addiction, and had been free of drugs since August, 1999.

Unfortunate case

Giving the committee's decision, the chairman (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, QC) said that the case was an exceptionally unfortunate one. There was no link between the theft of drugs and the dispensing error. On its own, that misconduct might have been dealt with by a reprimand. The thefts, however, were a much more serious matter, particularly as what had been stolen from Dr Begley's employers were amounts of cocaine, for her own use. Dr Begley clearly had addiction problems at the time. As the judge at her trial had said to her: “You were in a position of great trust, which you abused on a number of occasions for your own purposes”.

Dr Begley's name was not now on the register, because she had not paid her retention fee at the beginning of 2000, so the committee was not required to decide whether to remove it; it was required to decide whether it should be restored. However, the seriousness of the convictions against her led to the inevitable conclusion that her name should not be restored.

Dr Begley had three months in which to appeal against that decision.