Tres Vancouver pharmacists have been ordered that they do not provide patients with medicines for “safe supply” pending the result of an investigation requested by complaints about the provision of opioid treatment services in a couple of pharmacies of East Vancouver.
The BC Pharmaceutical College took the extraordinary step to announce provisional measures against Charanjit Pal, Jennifer Van Bui and Mamteshwari Ravnita Latchman this week. In a related case, the regulator also announced the suspension of a pharmaceutical room: Karandeep Singh Chohan.
Chohan, whose suspension will begin on May 27, is the former Quoter Outreach Pharmacy manager, where Bui and Latchman worked as staff pharmacists. Pal, whose suspension begins on May 12, is the Manager of Fraser Neighborhood Pharmacy, a few blocks away.
The University states that medical care providers expressed concern last spring about the management of pharmacies of the treatment of opioid agonists: the use of medicines such as methadone to control opioid abstinence symptoms.
Complaints supposedly caused inspections on the site in both pharmacies.
According to school, accusations are related to “narcotic inventory control and management, recipe verification requirements, Pharlenet record maintenance, patient consultations, supervision of non -pharmaceutical personnel and compliance with ethical standards.”
In a statement, the University Registrar and CEO, Suzanne Solven, said that the investigation is not complete and that the disciplinary procedures have not yet happened.
“Our responsibility is to ensure that the attention of pharmacy in BC is safe and ethical and we take this mandate extremely serious,” he said.
“In this case, preliminary evidence and accusations are so serious that the Investigation Committee decided that the extraordinary passage of provisional actions was necessary to protect the public while the investigation is underway.”
BC Supreme Court in the Supreme Court
None of the accusations against any of the pharmacists appointed by the University have been tested, and the two pharmacists of the personnel, Bui and Latchman, presented requests in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on Thursday to revoke the provisional measures against them.
According to judicial documents, the two pharmacists want an order to cancel the decision to impose conditions in their registration, since they affirm that the University Pharmacy Inspections were carried out without adequate legal authority.
Provisional restrictions follow a generalized concern in BC about the administration of the province’s safe supply program, which provides patients addicted to opioids a prescribed alternative.
Critics have complained about the deviation of safe supply drugs in the supply of toxic drugs, accusations that the province denied until the slides of the Ministry of Health filtered showed that the authorities believed that a significant part of the prescription pills was being trafficked nationally and internationally.
Last February, the province reviewed the program, forcing safe supplies users to take their medicine under the supervision of a pharmacist or medical care provider.
The CBC has also widely informed about concerns about pharmacies in the center of Vancouver in the Eastside center that pay customers a part of the money they demand from the Pharmacare program of BC.
In 2013, the University established professional practice standards to prohibit pharmacists from providing incentives to patients, a decision confirmed by the BC Court of Appeals in 2016.
BC Health Minister, Josie Osborne, announced that people who trust prescription opioids must now take those safer supply medications under the supervision of a pharmacist. It occurs after revelations, drugs deviated into organized criminals. As Katie Derosa reports, critics say the measure is very late.
Investigated for ‘similar concerns’
In addition to ordering them to “provide any service related to ‘safe supply’ in any form or capacity”, Bui, Lockman and Pal are ordered that they do not provide “any opioid agonist treatment service in any form or capacity.”
In affidavits filed in the BC Supreme Court, Latchman said he began working at Fraser Outreach Pharmacy in May 2023, while Bui said he started working in June 2023.
Both pharmacists claim that the university inspectors observed them to work in May 2024 and ask questions about their practice as pharmacists. They said they were not present for a second inspection in August 2024.
None said they were aware of any formal complaint against them.
The school says that Chohan was investigated “for similar concerns on five previous occasions between 2016 and 2023,” and Pal was investigated “for similar concerns in a different pharmacy in 2021”.
On Friday, the Fraser neighborhood pharmacy closed. A sign at the door said the business was only open half an hour a week due to personnel scarcity.
A pharmacy with a slightly different name now works outside the unit where the Disclosure Pharmacy of Fraser used to be located.
A man who claimed to be the new business owner called CBC to say that he bought the pharmacy from the old owners a week ago and was not told anything about the accusations.
