Published on September 27, 2012 at 08:35
ROME – Drugs never sold by the national health system were reimbursed. For this reason, the Municipality of Rome has decided to revoke the license for two pharmacies of Rome, one in the central via del Tritone and another along via Tuscolana, another major Roman artery. The story was reconstructed by the Messenger.
The "farmaconnection" investigation was triggered in 2005 when the Nas carabinieri discovered a doctor churning out prescriptions in industrial quantities. For the pharmacy in via Tuscolana, he signed 7,718 only of class A drugs "that is, totally paid by the national health system" for damage to the national health system of at least 972 thousand euros. All "fictitiously registered to non-existent clients and filled in with artfully illegible handwriting in order to make it impossible to identify them even through the regional codes", as explained by the sentence which convicted the doctor Claudio Grande and the pharmacists of via Tuscolana Giuseppe and Marco Morreale (for those in via del Tritone the statute of limitations has taken effect).
And this is the method of the pharmacy in via del Tritone:
all medicines were reimbursed, but in some cases the medicines were sold to other unsuspecting pharmacies. According to the reconstruction of the prosecutor Stefano Rocco Fava, the mechanism varied: the medium-cost drugs, after the reimbursement request which also provides for the sending of the "adhesive die" removed from the medicine box, "were reintroduced into the commercial circuit by applying fictitious dies made by the Pharmacy itself and sold to foreign tourists regardless of the packages bearing the different punches». The high-cost drugs "most exposed to potential checks" were "prescribed and recycled by marketing them in the Lazio region, moving them through fictitious tax documentation produced by the same pharmacy, as well as exporting them on the foreign market".
