Kansas pharmacy to pay $9.5 million settlement in fraud case

A small pharmacy based in Overland Park will pay $9.5 million to settle a federal health care fraud lawsuit.

The Kansas City Star reports $1.5 million of that will go to Emily Barnes, of Lenexa, who filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Stark Pharmacy in 2015. She alleged she saw several types of health care fraud, including changing prescriptions without a doctor's authorization and charging full price for prescriptions that weren't totally full.

The federal government intervened in that lawsuit, which named Stark Pharmacy and its three pharmacists.

Barnes' attorney, Graves Garrett, said Stark reached the settlement in December.

The lawsuit said Stark's routinely automatically refilled prescriptions for a pain cream that had an average profit of $2,000 per prescription when billed to Medicaid, whether the patient wanted it or not.