A Salmon Arm pharmacist has been banned from the profession for a year and fined $25,000 for purchasing pharmacy supplies and medication stolen from the Shuswap Lake General Hospital.
Laurent Pierre Roy, the owner of the Salmon Arm Remedy’s RX, admitted that between at least 2011 and 2018 he purchased stolen supplies and medication from an employee of the nearby hospital, according to a notice online from the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia.
“Evidence in the form of communication suggested the Registrant was aware of the diverted nature of the supplies he purchased, and that some of the cash he paid for the supplies to the hospital employee were diverted away from hospital accounts,” said the College of Pharmacists.
The Registrant may have benefited financially by purchasing the supplies from the hospital employee and then reselling the supplies from his pharmacy.”
The College has suspended Roy’s registration as a pharmacist for one year and banned him from managing a pharmacy or supervising pharmacist students for three years.
In addition to the $25,000 fine, Roy will also have to take an ethics course and exam.
The College of Pharmacists does not name the hospital employee Roy purchased the stolen goods from, but Interior Health does in a civil lawsuit, that also names Roy, filed in June.
Interior Health alleges in its lawsuit that Ian Petterson, as a staff pharmacist at the hospital, began diverting pharmacy supplies in 2004 until his employment with IH ceased in 2018.
The lawsuit alleges Petterson sold Roy medication for cash at below-market prices, while Roy manipulated the inventory system at his pharmacy to conceal incoming undocumented medication from Peterson.
The scheme was discovered in 2018 when an employee at Roy’s pharmacy observed a bag of cash labelled “SLGH $500,” which Roy had told another employee would be picked up by Petterson. The incident was reported to Interior Health, which investigated and terminated Petterson in 2018.
Roy and Petterson have not filed responses to court to Interior Health’s civil claim, which has not been proven in court.
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