Washington law requires that health care providers maintain a license to practice medicine. So does every other state. This means the state reviews applications and grants licenses to qualified individuals. Hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies have to confirm the doctors they hire are licensed to practice in their fields. Sometimes — not often — employers are duped by imposters. This is exactly what happened in California when Walgreens hired a woman who was only playing pharmacist. For twelve years. In that time she staffed several Walgreens locations, dispensing three-quarters of a million prescriptions to thousands of patients.

Walgreens faced charges by California state regulators for its actions in hiring and continuing to employ Ms. Kim Thien Le. Ms. Le herself faced criminal charges for impersonation and identity theft. Walgreens ultimately discovered Ms. Le’s duplicity during an internal audit in 2017 and terminated her. Nevertheless, the damage she had been distributing medications, including many controlled substances like opioids, for more than a decade.

Walgreens settled with state, but injured patients could have corporate negligence claims

Plaintiffs are limited in the types of claims they may bring against medical providers. Plaintiffs may bring a claim for what is called corporate negligence against large facilities for negligent hiring practices. These may be against a hospital, clinic, or pharmacy, for example. A claim for malpractice may lead to discovery that a physician had a history of drug abuse, a long history of malpractice claims, or the hospital failed to even confirm if the doctor in question was licensed to practice medicine. The last example is really quite rare, which makes this situation newsworthy. But if any patients were injured by errors of Ms. Le’s, Walgreens would be in hot water all over again.

Ms. Le pleaded no contest to the criminal charges and faces sentencing in May. Walgreens paid a fine of $335,000 and recently settled a consumer protection complaint by the state of California for $7.5M. But if Ms. Le made errors that hurt patients, Walgreens would be in hot water all over again.

Read more here: Attorney General files criminal charges against Bay Area Walgreens’ fake pharmacist

Read some of our prior coverage