A pharmacy company in Philadelphia pleaded guilty Wednesday to felony Medicaid and Medicare fraud and theft charges involving reimbursements for unregulated HIV medications and is paying more than $2 million in restitution, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said.
Surnil Pharmacy Inc., which is owned by Subhash Patel and primarily operated as Haussemann’s Pharmacy at Sixth Street and Girard Avenue in Northern Liberties, pleaded guilty in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.
As part of a plea deal, Patel, who is a pharmacist, is prohibited from being a Medicaid and Medicare provider for at least five years, and his pharmacist license will be suspended for that same period, Sunday said.
“This company put profits over their patients and broke the law to ignore those regulations for their own benefit,” Sunday said in a statement.
Haussemann’s Pharmacy has since closed. Other pharmacies owned by Patel — West Girard Health Pharmacy, East Lehigh Health Pharmacy, Frankford Health Pharmacy, and 11th and Walnut Pharmacy — have also closed.
Sunday noted that the investigation found no evidence of individuals who experienced physical harm or illness due to the dispensed medications.
An attorney representing Surnil Pharmacy and Patel could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
According to Sunday, agents interviewed Haussemann’s employees who said that Patel was acquiring expensive HIV medications from a source other than one of Haussemann’s legitimate wholesale drug suppliers.
The investigation found that nearly 100,000 tablets of HIV medications dispensed at the pharmacy were not obtained through documented purchases from authorized distributors, Sunday said.
Haussemann’s Pharmacy had been described as Philadelphia’s oldest surviving pharmacy, the Philadelphia Gay News reported in 2013 as part of an obituary for Marc Garber, who had been the owner.
(Frederick W. Haussmann, a German immigrant, became the owner of an existing pharmacy at Sixth and Girard that later bore his name, including with an alternate spelling, in 1918, according to documents maintained by the German Society of Pennsylvania.)
Garber “was big on giving out medication to HIV/AIDS patients if they couldn’t afford it,” Garber’s sister, Randee Solomon, told PGN. “He would just give it to them for free. He would pay the cost.”
It is unclear when Surnil Pharmacy and Subhash Patel took over Haussemann’s Pharmacy.