Wairarapa pharmacist convicted of fraud

Today a pharmacist was sentenced to nine months home detention and ordered to pay $25,000 in reparation for defrauding the Wairarapa District Health Board of just over $142,000.

The Wellington District Court has found Ithiel Satya, the former manager of Southend Pharmacy in Masterton’s Queen Street, guilty on 74 counts of fraud.

Soon the Wairarapa DHB will begin discussions with Southend Pharmacy to recover the amount defrauded by Mr Satya.

The Ministry of Health’s Audit & Compliance Unit said that between 21 February 2002 and 18 October 2005, the pharmacist made 5,993 fraudulent claims to charge the Wairarapa DHB $142,443 for prescription medicines that were not dispensed.

Over the period of more than three years, Mr Satya habitually dispensed repeat medicines even if patients had not asked for them. In a number of cases, medicines were dispensed for deceased patients.

“Claims for almost 6,000 repeat medicines were processed through the pharmacy’s computer system as if they had been dispensed. As a result, the pharmacy received just over $142,000 in subsidies from the Wairarapa DHB,” said Anthony Hill, the Ministry’s Deputy Director-General for Sector Accountability and Funding.

Since these patients did not know that these medicines had been dispensed, a substantial proportion of these medicines were never collected. Those medicines which were not past their “use by” date were returned to stock by Mr Satya.

There were instances where the second and third dispensing of a medicine, as recorded on the pharmacy’s computer system, were done either on the same day or close to each other over a very short period.

District Court Judge Christopher Tuohy said that though Mr Satya obtained no direct financial gain, he was “motivated by indirect professional and financial advantage in the longer term”.

Judge Tuohy also determined that Mr Satya had no accomplice to the fraud, noting that he often processed the fraudulent claims on weekends and after hours when he was working alone.

“This case should serve as a warning that fraud will not be tolerated by the Ministry of Health or the District Health Boards,” Mr Hill stressed. “Fraud erodes the limited resources for health services and disadvantages especially those people who have the most need of health care.”

“We rely on the honesty of health professionals, including pharmacists, when we process claims for health services and prescription medicines. It is disappointing when a health professional breaches that trust and defrauds the system.”

Audit & Compliance recovered just over $1 million in false and inappropriate claims from pharmacies for the two years to 10 March 2009. However, as a result of Audit & Compliance’s actions, almost $4 million in fraudulent claims has been prevented from being paid during that two-year period.