A former Las Vegas CVS pharmacy technician recently filed a lawsuit against CVS. She claims the pharmacy tried to silence her through interrogation and had police hold her until she received a psychological exam. She is accusing the company of trying to silence her concerns about the auto-refill program and more.
Anna Namnard, the former pharmacy technician, is accusing the CVS pharmacy chain of:
- Automatically enrolling customers in its prescription auto-refill program without obtaining customers’ permission.
- Changing the strength and quantities of prescription drugs without contacting patients’ doctors.
Namnard filed this lawsuit after, she claims, she was told that calling doctors was a waste of time and would hinder the staff filling prescriptions fast enough to make customers happy. She said she was told to enroll prescriptions in the Readyfill Program without the patients’ permission in order to meet quotas. She also stated that CVS staff pharmacists changed patients’ prescription doses and quantities without calling the patients’ doctors – potentially risking the patients’ health and safety (all of this was done to save time).
Namnard believes that the staff participates in these actions because the CVS Corporation pressures pharmacists to meet quotas and almost forces them to fill prescriptions that may be against the law. The pharmacy staff gets graded by patients on how fast it fills the prescriptions; in order to get good reviews, it can’t afford to waste any time.
This story ran on News 3 and a CVS pharmacy customer who saw this story decided to speak out because she experienced a problem with the auto-refill program. Melanie Walker told News 3 that she has a prescription at a Las Vegas CVS pharmacy and that the pharmacy put the prescription on its Readyfill Program without her consent. Because of its actions, a different prescription was canceled at another pharmacy because CVS was filling a medication she didn’t need.