Pharmacist admits falsifying scripts

Mt Albert pharmacy owner Wayne Baker will be sentenced in October after yesterday admitting 93 charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage. Photo / Richard Robinson

An Auckland pharmacist has admitted nearly 100 charges of filing false prescriptions, worth thousands of dollars, that were not requested, had expired, or were in the names of dead patients.

Wayne David Baker, a co-owner of Mt Albert Pharmacy, yesterday pleaded guilty in the Auckland District Court to 93 charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage.

The 54-year-old defrauded the Auckland District Health Board by filing false claims worth nearly $70,000 between July 2006 and July 2009.

According to court documents, a significant part of his income came from government subsidies for dispensing and supplying drugs.

In February 2009, a locum pharmacist phoned the Ministry of Health's fraud hotline with concerns about subsidies being claimed by the company that owned the Mt Albert pharmacy, Sandringham Village Pharmacy.

An investigation initially looked at invoice and claiming data which led to a full analysis of the pharmacy computer system. Interviews with prescribers and patients followed.

The investigation revealed Baker was misrepresenting and altering entries for the drug Simvastatin to increase subsidies, had created fictitious repeat dispensings to obtain additional fees, and claimed for prescriptions that were not given to patients.

Part of the offending involved Baker altering computer entries to show a drug other than the one prescribed had been claimed.

The drug he changed it to had a subsidy 6.6 times higher than the cheaper brand supplied to patients.

In 25 cases, Baker claimed for repeats after patients had died, which involved 575 pharmaceutical items.

When he was spoken to by investigators about using the cheaper brand, Baker said he wasn't aware there was a difference in price and if it was wrongly claimed then it was an inadvertent mistake.

He later acknowledged it was a "possibility" he had been deliberately claiming the more expensive drug.

The Ministry of Health said he had repaid the entire amount. A sum of $69,070.59 was repaid as well as a further $26,743.70 received by the pharmacy that it shouldn't have.

Baker has been remanded on bail until sentencing in October.